THE  CLASSIC 
OINTGFVIEW 


KENYON  COX 


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SCAMMON  LECTURES 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFOR1 ' 

AT    LOS  ANGELES 


) 


V 


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in  2007  with  funding  from 

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THE   CLASSIC  POINT   OF  VIEW 


Plate  1. — "The  Sower,"  by  Jean  Francois  Millet. 

In  the  Metropolitan  Museum  of  Art.     Vanderbilt  Collection. 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT 
OF  VIEW 

SIX  LECTURES  ON  PAINTING 

DELIVERED  ON  THE  SCAMMON  FOUNDATION  AT 

THE  ART  INSTITUTE  OF   CHICAGO 

IN  THE   YEAR  1911 

BY 

KENYON   COX 


WITH    THIRTY-TWO    ILLUSTRATIONS 


CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 
NEW  YORK    *    *    *    *    MCMXI 


Copyright,  1911,  by  Charles  Scribner's  Sons 
Published  September,  1911 


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PREFACE 


IN  the  course  of  a  life  devoted  to  the  study,  the  practice, 
and  the  teaching  of  the  art  of  painting  I  have,  naturally, 
arrived  at  some  pretty  definite  conclusions  as  to  the 
nature  of  that  art  and  of  the  problems  involved  in  it — 
some  decided  opinions  as  to  what  that  art  has  been,  is, 

o  and  should  be.     These  opinions  I  have  tried,  however 

imperfectly,  to  exemplify  in  my  work  and  to  inculcate  in 

t°  my  teaching.     They  have  also,  inevitably,  colored  what 

I  have  written.  But  what  I  have  written  has,  hitherto, 
been  casual  and  occasional — a  discussion  of  this  or  that 
master,  a  criticism  of  this  or  that  particular  work  of  art — 
and  the  bases  of  my  criticism,  the  fundamental  ideas  on 
which  it  is  founded,  have  had,  for  the  most  part,  to  be 
taken  for  granted,  or  to  be  cursorily  and  incompletely 
expressed.  These  papers  have,  moreover,  been  written 
at  long  intervals,  and  for  different  purposes,  and  could 
hardly  be  entirely  consistent  with  each  other.  Some- 
thing like  a  general  point  of  view  could,  perhaps,  be  in- 
ferred from  them,  and  something  like  a  consistent  body 
of  doctrine  made  out,  by  the  exercise  of  sufficient  care 
and  sufficient  intelligence;  but  such  careful  and  intelli- 
gent consideration  as  would  be  necessary  could  hardly 
be  expected  of  many  readers. 
I  have  therefore  welcomed  the  opportunity  afforded  by  the 

[v] 


invitation  from  The  Art  Institute  of  Chicago  to  deliver 
the  Scammon  Lectures  for  igu  to  draw  up  a  definitive 
credo — a  detailed  and  explicit  confession  of  artistic  faith. 
The  following  pages  will,  accordingly,  be  found  to  con- 
tain a  statement,  as  clear  as  I  can  make  it,  of  what  one 
painter  believes  and  hopes  and  fears  with  regard  to 
painting ;  of  what  he  takes  to  be  the  malady  of  modern 
art,  and  of  where  he  looks  for  the  remedy  for  it.  It  would 
be  little  less  than  miraculous  if  such  a  statement  of  be- 
lief should  contain  the  truth,  the  whole  truth,  and  nothing 
but  the  truth.  It  must  contain  errors,  and  may  contain 
wrongheadedness.  At  least  it  is  an  honest  attempt  at  a 
contribution  to  the  truth. 

It  has  been  said  that  the  criticism  of  art  by  an  artist  is 
never  anything  else  than  an  apology  for  his  own  work. 
This  is  so  far  true  that  the  expression  of  opinions  defi- 
nitely held  must  be  the  expression  of  ideals  consciously 
striven  for,  but  I  should  be  sorry  to  have  it  thought  that 
my  description  of  what  painting  should  be  is  intended  for 
a  description  of  what  I  suppose  my  own  painting  to  be. 
We  moderns  are  all  in  the  same  boat  together.  We  are 
all  lamentably  ill  educated,  and  we  are  all  trying  to  make 
up  for  the  faults  of  our  education  by  strenuous  endeavor. 
We  paint  as  we  can,  and  none  of  us  can  afford  to  have 
the  validity  of  his  opinions  judged  by  his  success  in 
carrying  them  into  practice. 

KENYON  COX. 


[Vi] 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.     The  Classic  Spirit 1 

II.     The  Subject  in  Art 36 

III.  Design 77 

IV.  Drawing 120 

V.     Light  and  Shade  and  Color     .     .     .  158 

VI.     Technique 196 


[vii] 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

1.  Millet,  "The  Sower,"  Metropolitan  Mu- 

seum   Frontispiece 

FACING   PAGE 

2.  Poussin,  "The  Testament  of  Endamitas," 

Moltke  Collection,  Copenhagen    ....        8 

3.  Stevens,  "Une  Veuve,"  Ryerson  Collection, 

Chicago 16 

4.  Greuze,  "The  Punished  Son,"  Louvre    .     .       24 

5.  Hogarth,  "The  Contract  (Marriage  A-la- 

Mode),"  National  Gallery 32 

6.  Velazquez,  "Surrender  of  Breda,"  Prado 

Gallery 40 

7.  Blashfield,   "Washington   Laying  Down 

his  Commission,"  Court  House,  Baltimore      48 

8.  Giotto,    "Death    of   St.    Francis,"    Santa 

Croce,  Florence 56 

9.  Perugino,  "The  Virgin  in  Glory,"  Bologna      64 

Fix! 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

KM  IN'.  1'  \'.  I. 

10.  Leonardo,  "The  Last  Supper,"  Milan  .     .  72 

11.  Raphael,  "La  Disputa,"  Vatican     ...  80 

12.  Titian,  "The  Entombment,"  Louvre     .     .  88 

13.  Tintoretto,  "Pallas  Driving  away  Mars," 

Ducal  Palace,  Venice 96 

14.  Rubens,  "The  Daughters  of  Leucippus," 

Munich 112 

15.  Millet,  "The  Gleaners,"  Louvre      .    .    .  118 

16.  Holbein,  "Erasmus,"  Louvre 124 

17.  Ingres,  "Mme.  Riviere,"  Louvre  ....  130 

18.  Corot,  "Dance  of  Nymphs,"  Louvre      .     .  136 

19.  Winslow    Homer,    "The    Gulf    Stream,"  142 

Metropolitan  Museum 

20.  Botticelli,  The  Three  Graces  (fragment 

of  "Primavera"),  Academy,  Florence  .     .  150 

21.  Michelangelo,  "Creation  of  Adam,"  Sis- 

tine  Chapel 156 

22.  Rembrandt,  "Lot  and  his  Family"  (draw- 

ing)      162 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING   PAGB 

23.  Veronese,   "Venus  and   Mars  Bound  by 

Cupid,"  Metropolitan  Museum   ....     170 

24.  Fragonard,  "Les  Baigneuses,"  iowtre   .     .     176 
2.5.     David,  "The  Oath  of  the  Horatii,"  Louvre     182 

26.  Prudhon,     "  L'Enlevement    de    Psyche," 

Louvre 188 

27.  Ingres,  "Odalisque  Couchee,"  Louvre  .    .     194 

28.  Millet,  "  Peasant  with  Wheelbarrow  "  (etch- 

ing)     200 

29.  Puvis  de  Chavannes,  "Rest,"  Amiens      .     206 

50.  Puvis  de  Chavannes,  "The  Song  of  the 

Shepherd,"  Metropolitan  Museum  .     .     .     212 

51.  Correggio,    "Danae,"    Borghese    Gallery, 

Rome 218 

32.    Rembrandt,  "Dr.  Faustus"  (etching)    .     .    224 


[xi] 


THE 
CLASSIC   POINT   OF   VIEW 


THE   CLASSIC  SPIRIT 

The  audience  I  hope  to  reach  is  made 
up  of  two  parts:  of  those  young  artists 
who  have,  to  some  extent,  the  future  of 
American  art  in  their  hands,  and  of  that 
general  public  whose  influence  upon  our 
art,  exercised  through  its  patronage  and 
appreciation  or  its  refusal  of  patronage 
and  appreciation,  must  be  no  less  real 
though  less  direct.  In  trying  to  express 
such  opinions  and  beliefs  as  are  the  re- 
sult of  thirty  years'  practice  and  study  of 
the  art  of  painting  I  shall  try  to  remem- 
ber the  general  public  in  the  manner  of 
what  I  have  to  say,  avoiding  technical  jar- 
[i] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

gon  and  striving  to  speak  in  the  language 
of  all  the  world.  But  it  is  to  the  young 
artists  that  I  would  especially  appeal; 
first,  because  it  is  more  important  that 
they  should  be  right;  second,  because  there 
is  more  danger  that  they  will  go  wrong. 
The  public  is  in  little  danger.  In  general, 
it  is  too  conservative  rather  than  the  re- 
verse. It  listens,  in  a  bewildered  way,  to 
the  hurly-burly  of  conflicting  schools  and 
movements,  tries  to  believe  in  the  latest 
discovery  of  the  newest  newspaper  critic, 
shrugs  its  shoulders,  and  buys  an  old- 
fashioned  picture  that  it  can  understand. 
It  may  neglect  true  genius  but  it  gives 
little  active  encouragement  to  the  sham. 
The  young  artist  is  more  easily  led  astray 
by  false  lights.  He  sees  countless  experi- 
ments, hears  countless  doctrines  and 
theories,  listens  to  the  exaltation  of  incom- 
petence or  eccentricity  and  to  the  pooh- 
poohing  of  all  quiet  attainment.  The  more 
ardent  he  is  the  more  difficult  he  finds  it 

[2] 


THE  CLASSIC  SPIRIT 

to  keep  his  head.  Why  should  he  toil  and 
make  slow  progress  toward  an  unattain- 
able goal  when  so  many  short  cuts  to 
notoriety,  if  not  to  fame,  are  opened  be- 
fore him?  Quick!  let  him  get  something 
before  the  public.  It  is  much  easier  to  find 
a  new  way  of  being  bad  than  to  master  the 
old  way  of  being  good,  and  the  new  bad 
thing  is,  at  any  rate,  sure  to  be  noticed.  I 
protest,  it  is  wonderful  to  me  that  there 
should  any  longer  be  such  a  thing  as  a  stu- 
dent of  art,  it  has  become  so  easy  to  be 
hailed  a  master. 

That  there  are  serious  students,  however, 
the  existence  of  a  few  of  our  schools  of 
art  sufficiently  testifies;  and  it  is  to  the 
serious  students  of  to-day,  the  serious 
artists  of  to-morrow,  that  I  especially 
make  my  plea  for  the  Classic  Spirit. 

The  Classic  Spirit  is  the  disinterested 
search  for  perfection ;  it  is  the  love  of  clear- 
ness and  reasonableness  and  self-control; 
it  is,  above  all,  the  love  of  permanence  and 
[3] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

of  continuity.  It  asks  of  a  work  of  art,  not 
that  it  shall  be  novel  or  effective,  but  that 
it  shall  be  fine  and  noble.  It  seeks  not 
merely  to  express  individuality  or  emotion 
but  to  express  disciplined  emotion  and 
individuality  restrained  by  law.  It  strives 
for  the  essential  rather  than  the  accidental, 
the  eternal  rather  than  the  momentary — 
loves  impersonality  more  than  personality, 
and  feels  more  power  in  the  orderly  suc- 
cession of  the  hours  and  the  seasons  than 
in  the  violence  of  earthquake  or  of  storm. 
And  it  loves  to  steep  itself  in  tradition.  It 
would  have  each  new  work  connect  itself 
in  the  mind  of  him  who  sees  it  with  all  the 
noble  and  lovely  works  of  the  past,  bring- 
ing them  to  his  memory  and  making  their 
beauty  and  charm  a  part  of  the  beauty  and 
charm  of  the  work  before  him.  It  does  not 
deny  originality  and  individuality — they 
are  as  welcome  as  inevitable.  It  does  not 
consider  tradition  as  immutable  or  set 
rigid  bounds  to  invention.  But  it  desires 
[4] 


THE  CLASSIC  SPIRIT 

that  each  new  presentation  of  truth  and 
beauty  shall  show  us  the  old  truth  and 
the  old  beauty,  seen  only  from  a  different 
angle  and  colored  by  a  different  medium. 
It  wishes  to  add  link  by  link  to  the  chain 
of  tradition,  but  it  does  not  wish  to  break 
the  chain. 

The  Classic  Spirit,  as  I  understand  it, 
and  wish  to  present  it  to  you,  has  little 
to  do  with  the  so-called  "classic  school" 
founded  by  Jacques  Louis  David.  Indeed 
this  spirit  seldom  was  lacking  in  the  art  of 
the  world  before  his  advent.  Until  the  end 
of  the  eighteenth  century  the  stream  of 
tradition  in  the  art  of  painting  was  con- 
tinuous, and  even  the  most  powerful  in- 
dividualities and  the  most  romantic  tem- 
peraments stood  but  little  aside  from  it. 
Michelangelo  himself,  the  greatest  of  ro- 
manticists, was  a  classic  by  one  side  of  his 
nature,  and  it  was  only  that  side  that  was 
understood  by  his  contemporaries  or  was 
effective  with  them ;  and  even  Rembrandt, 
[5] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

strangely  and  imperiously  as  he  modified 
what  he  found  there,  searched  the  art  of 
the  past  for  the  foundations  of  his  own. 
These  were  the  exceptions.  The  others, 
even  the  greatest,  were  content  to  modify 
slightly  the  tradition  they  had  received 
and  to  hand  it  down  to  their  successors. 
Giorgione  and  Titian  enriched  and  broad- 
ened the  tradition  they  had  received  from 
Bellini;  Rubens  studied  their  method, 
founded  his  own  upon  it,  and  in  his  turn 
passed  it  on  to  Watteau  and  the  eighteenth 
century. 

Then  came  the  French  Revolution,  and 
among  the  many  things,  good  and  bad,  for 
which  it  is  responsible,  one  is  the  break- 
ing short  off  of  the  traditions  of  painting. 
David,  a  revolutionary  in  art  as  in  poli- 
tics, influenced  by  the  imagined  revival  of 
Roman  ideals,  invented  an  art  founded 
on  antique  sculpture — an  art  which  con- 
temned color,  neglected  light  and  shade, 
destroyed  technical  beauty,  and  reduced 

[6] 


THE  CLASSIC  SPIRIT 

even  drawing  to  a  kind  of  mechanical 
correctness  without  life  or  accent — and  by 
his  powerful  character  and  great  influence 
imposed  this  art  upon  all  continental 
Europe.  When  the  storm  was  over  it  was 
only  in  the  one  country  which  had  con- 
tinuously stood  out  against  the  revolution 
— it  was  only  in  England — that  any 
vestiges  of  the  art  of  painting  remained. 
Prudhon,  who  had  remained  a  real  painter 
in  spite  of  David,  died  in  1823,  and  Gros, 
who  would  have  been  a  real  painter  if 
he  could,  committed  suicide.  France  was 
given  over  to  the  Guerins  and  Girodets, 
and  in  Germany  they  were  producing  car- 
toons. Lawrence,  with  his  clever  but  mer- 
etricious echoes  of  Reynolds  and  Gains- 
borough, and  Constable,  the  preserver 
of  the  landscape  tradition,  were  the  only 
painters  left. 
Then  began  the  long  confusion  of  cross 
currents  and  opposing  forces  which  is  the 
history  of  modern  art.  For  the  first  time 

[7] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

since  art  began  there  was  no  accepted 
tradition,  no  authoritative  guide;  it  was 
every  man  for  himself.  The  system  of  ap- 
prenticeship, by  which  a  painter  learned 
to  practise  his  art  in  a  recognized  and 
approved  manner  before  making  such 
changes  in  that  manner  as  his  own  tem- 
perament and  his  own  needs  might  sug- 
gest, was  gone;  and  if  it  could  have  been 
revived  there  were  no  longer  any  masters 
to  take  apprentices.  The  school,  which 
had  succeeded  to  this  system,  taught  only 
a  little  drawing,  and  that  of  a  purely 
naturalistic  kind.  Before  each  individual 
artist,  for  the  last  hundred  years,  there 
has  been  the  impossible  and  heart-break- 
ing task  of  creating  his  art  again  from  the 
beginning;  of  finding  out  both  what  he 
wanted  to  do  and  how  he  should  do  it; 
of  discovering  and  piecing  together  from 
the  study  of  nature  and  of  the  art  of  the 
past,  composition  and  drawing,  light  and 
shade  and  color,  even  the  nature  of  his 

[8] 


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THE  CLASSIC  SPIRIT 

materials  and  the  method  of  handling 
them.  Is  it  any  wonder  that  modern  art 
has  produced  great  talents  but  very  few 
masters  ?  Is  it  any  wonder  that  we  can 
show  nothing  like  the  assured  and  abun- 
dant production  of  the  giants  of  the  past  ? 
Is  it  any  wonder  that  the  record  of  modern 
artists  is  so  often  that  of  failure  and  de- 
spair; of  modern  art  that  of  inconclusive 
gropings,  leading  nowhere  but  into  the 
bog? 

What  has  been  generally  known  as  the 
Romantic  Revolution  in  art  was,  so  far 
at  least  as  painting  is  concerned,  essen- 
tially an  effort  to  get  back  the  traditions 
which  had  been  lost,  to  renew  the  connec- 
tion with  the  past,  to  rediscover  the  art. 
Its  great  leader,  Delacroix,  was  a  man  of 
ardent  and  romantic  temperament,  but  he 
had  a  great  respect  for  the  past  and  for 
tradition,  and  it  was  a  sound  instinct  that 
led  him  to  found  his  art  upon  that  of 
Rubens,  the  heir  of  the  Venetians  and  the 

[9] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

modifier  of  their  manner  to  suit  more 
modern  requirements.  From  Rubens, 
through  Watteau,  was  descended  the 
whole  of  the  French  eighteenth  century, 
and  from  Rubens,  through  Van  Dyck, 
the  whole  English  School,  then  still  sub- 
sisting, though  its  greatest  days  were  past. 
If  the  old  conditions  could  be  restored  at 
all  it  would  be  by  beginning  again  with 
the  great  Fleming  as  the  nearest  source  of 
authentic  tradition.  In  a  splendid  effort 
to  do  this  Delacroix  spent  his  life,  and  he 
produced  many  noble  works  in  the  course 
of  it,  but  in  spite  of  such  personal  suc- 
cesses, that  life  was,  in  the  main,  a  failure. 
He  was  praised  and  admired  and  made  a 
member  of  the  Institute,  but  he  could  not 
found  a  school  with  a  stable  tradition. 

A  similar  attempt  was  made  by  the  great 
landscape  painters,  Rousseau  and  Corot. 
They  were  both  profound  students  of 
nature,  and  the  addition  they  made  to 
the  world's  stock  of  knowledge  of  natural 

[10] 


THE  CLASSIC  SPIRIT 

aspects  was  so  great  that  we  are  apt  to 
think  of  them  as  naturalists  first  of  all.  In 
reality  they  were  both  of  classic  temper. 
Rousseau  founded  his  art  upon  Ruysdael 
and  Hobbema,  Corot  founded  his  upon 
Claude  and  Poussin.  Their  effort  was  to 
vitalize  tradition  and  turn  it  to  new  uses; 
to  gain  new  knowledge  but  to  crystallize 
it  in  forms  reminiscent  of  the  past.  Look 
at  any  of  their  characteristic  works  and 
you  will  feel,  underlying  the  detailed  study 
of  natural  forms  in  Rousseau,  underlying 
the  atmospheric  mystery  of  Corot,  a  some- 
thing which  connects  these  modern  pict- 
ures with  everything  fine  that  had  been 
done  before  them.  Modern  as  they  are, 
they  are  pervaded  with  the  Classic  Spirit. 
But  of  all  these  "revolutionaries"  the 
most  classically  minded  was  precisely  that 
one  who  was  considered  the  most  revolu- 
tionary of  all,  Jean  Francois  Millet.  This 
"man  of  the  woods,"  as  his  fellow  pupils 
in  Delaroche's  studio  called  him,  this 
[11] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

painter  of  peasants  whom  the  critics  of  the 
day  thought  a  socialist  and  almost  a  bomb 
thrower,  was  a  conservative  of  conserva- 
tives, a  worshipper  of  that  stern  old  clas- 
sicist Poussin,  the  last  practitioner  of 
"the  grand  style."  So  essentially  classic 
was  he  that,  in  the  pages  to  follow,  you 
will  find  me  citing  him  more  often,  in  il- 
lustration of  my  meaning,  than  any  other 
modern  painter,  unless  it  be  that  greatest 
of  the  upholders  of  the  official  school — 
Ingres. 
For,  during  all  the  changes  that  have 
passed  over  the  art  of  France,  the  "school" 
has  subsisted,  and  still  subsists,  modifying 
slowly  its  regimen,  producing  many  re- 
spectable painters  if  very  few  great  ones, 
supplying  a  training  most  imperfect,  in- 
deed, but  the  only  thing  resembling  a 
training  of  any  kind  that  is  to  be  had.  To 
the  school  the  very  men  who  have  revolted 
against  it  owe  a  great  part  of  their  effec- 
tive force,  and  to  the  school,  as  a  restrain- 

[12] 


THE  CLASSIC  SPIRIT 

ing  influence,  we  probably  owe  it  that  the 
present  state  of  the  art  is  not  more  chaotic 
and  more  hopeless  than  it  actually  is. 

Of  the  destructive  and  disintegrating  in- 
fluences that  have  been  brought  to  bear 
on  modern  art,  the  most  damaging  was 
probably  the  invention  of  photography. 
In  the  old  days  the  young  artist  learned 
his  art  first,  accepting  the  methods  and 
the  formulae  of  his  master,  before  he  went 
to  nature  that  he  might  add  his  own  obser- 
vations to  the  inherited  stock.  Nowadays 
he  is  set  to  study  nature  in  the  beginning, 
being  left  to  find  his  own  conventions  as 
best  he  may.  The  result  of  this  has  been 
greatly  to  increase  the  tendency  of  the 
young  artist  to  consider  the  exact  imita- 
tion of  nature  as  the  primary  problem  of 
art.  Photography  seemed  to  show  him,  all 
at  once,  what  nature  actually  looks  like, 
and  painting  embarked  on  a  long  and 
ruinous  emulation  of  the  camera.  What 
had  been  a  natural  and,  in  some  respects, 

[13] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

a  healthy  and  necessary  preoccupation  of 
the  student  became  the  guiding  principle 
of  a  lifetime,  and  men  thought  not  of  how 
to  produce  a  beautiful  picture,  but  of  what 
were  the  exact  facts  of  the  world  about 
them. 

In  England  the  result  was  the  Pre- 
Raphaelite  movement,  which  finally  trans- 
formed itself  into  the  aesthetic  movement 
of  Rossetti  and  Burne-Jones,  but  not  be- 
fore it  had  destroyed  what  was  left  of  the 
older  English  school.  Some  part  of  the  old 
tradition  still  lingered  there,  and  Etty, 
though  an  artist  of  limited  range,  was  a 
sound  and  brilliant  technician.  He  has 
had  no  successor,  and  English  art,  since 
the  days  of  the  Brotherhood,  has  been 
drifting  rudderless,  like  that  of  other  coun- 
tries. 

In  France  the  same  desire  for  realism  in- 
fluenced a  long  line  of  men,  from  Courbet, 
who,  fortunately  for  us,  was  not  so  realis- 
tic as  he  thought  himself,  to  Bastien-Le 

[14] 


THE  CLASSIC  SPIRIT 

Page.  I  was  myself  a  student  in  Paris 
when  Bastien  was  making  some  of  his  first 
great  successes,  and  can  look  back,  now, 
with  a  certain  amusement,  at  the  exagger- 
ated estimation  in  which  we  held  him. 
Here,  it  seemed  to  us,  was  the  last  word  of 
art — the  consummation  to  which  every- 
thing had  been  tending.  All  progress  in 
art  had  been,  we  thought,  a  nearer  ap- 
proximation to  the  truth  of  nature — here 
was  the  truth  itself,  as  literal  and  as  like  as 
the  image  at  the  back  of  a  camera.  The 
exact  portraiture  of  a  particular  peasant 
woman  in  a  particular  hay-field  under  the 
nearly  unchanging  light  of  a  cloudy  sky — 
that  being  the  only  outdoor  light  in  which 
such  detailed  portraiture  is  possible — 
what  more  could  one  ask  ?  Well,  somehow, 
one  did  ask  more.  Composition  and  line 
and  color  and  beauty  of  workmanship 
continued  to  assert  themselves  as  desirable 
qualities,  and  by  this  time  all  the  world  is 
pretty  well  agreed  that  pure  naturalism  is 

[15] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

a  failure.  Now  that  some  artists  and  some 
critics  are  trying  to  prove  that  photog- 
raphy may  be  an  art  we  are  ready  for  the 
definite  conclusion  that  art  should  not  be 
photographic. 

Another  manifestation  of  the  naturalistic 
tendency  is  what  has  usually  been  called 
the  impressionistic  movement — that  which 
people  are  now  beginning  to  call  luminism. 
What  is  essential  in  it  is  an  investigation 
of  the  laws  of  light  and  an  effort  to  invent 
means  of  rendering  the  effects  of  natural 
light  upon  objects.  It  is  not  necessary, 
here,  to  go  deeply  into  the  question  of  the 
nature  or  validity  of  these  means,  or  the 
measure  of  success  attained.  The  im- 
pressionists managed,  at  least,  to  call  at- 
tention to  the  existence  of  light  and  color 
and  to  enliven  the  palette  even  of  the 
schoolmen.  But  the  movement  was  scien- 
tific rather  than  artistic,  and  the  pictures 
of  its  strongest  man,  Claude  Monet,  often 
seem  like  a  series  of  demonstrations  rather 

[16] 


Plate  3. — "Une  Veuve,"  from  the  painting  by  Alfred  Stevens. 

In  the  Collection  of  Mr.  Martin  A.  Ryerson,  Chicago. 


THE  CLASSIC  SPIRIT 

than  things  of  beauty  created  for  human 
delight.  It  is,  really,  only  in  this  country 
that  the  impressionistic  formula  has  been 
seized  upon  for  its  capabilities  of  beauty 
and,  in  the  hands  of  Hassam  and  others, 
bent  to  the  ends  of  decoration. 

While  all  this  intensive  study  of  natural 
fact  and  natural  aspect  was  going  on,  there 
were  artists  who  revolted  from  it;  artists 
who  cared  more  for  art  than  for  nature 
and  whose  effort  was  for  self-expression 
rather  than  for  the  recording  of  observa- 
tions. I  shall  mention  but  two  of  them, 
men  of  widely  differing  temperaments  and 
achievements,  because  the  nature  and  the 
degree  of  their  success  and  failure  seem 
to  me  symptomatic  of  the  disease  of  nine- 
teenth century  art — Gustave  Moreau  and 
James  MacNeill  Whistler.  Moreau  was  a 
man  of  intellect,  a  poet  and  a  dreamer; 
Whistler  was  pure  painter,  caring  only 
for  the  material  beauty  of  his  production, 
and   despising  any  literary   implication. 

[17] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

Both  were  entirely  out  of  sympathy  with 
the  art  that  was  practised  about  them  and 
with  the  public  to  whom  they  must  appeal. 
Moreau  shut  himself  up  and  produced  in 
loneliness  and  isolation  a  series  of  strange 
works,  often  of  great  beauty  but  with  a 
taint  of  morbidity  in  them.  Whistler 
fought  the  world  instead  of  flying  from  it, 
and  wasted  in  brilliant  but  futile  contro- 
versy half  the  strength  that  should  have 
gone  to  the  creation  of  masterpieces.  The 
weakness  of  the  one  was  a  lack  of  balance, 
of  the  other  a  lack  of  training;  of  both,  the 
absence  of  any  normal  and  right  relation 
to  their  public.  How  pitifully  slight  is  the 
production  of  either  compared  to  the  mag- 
nificent fecundity  of  those  old  masters 
who,  secure  in  the  possession  of  a  sound 
tradition  and  assured  of  a  constant  de- 
mand for  what  they  could  do,  poured 
forth  masterpiece  after  masterpiece  with 
the  ease  of  a  fruit  tree  bearing  good  fruit. 
For  it  is  only  in  our  modern  time  that  the 

[18] 


THE  CLASSIC  SPIRIT 

unpopularity  of  the  greatest  artists  has  be- 
come so  proverbial  that  we  are  tempted  to 
think  unpopularity  a  proof  of  greatness. 
In  the  great  days  of  art  the  artist  under- 
stood his  public  and  his  public  understood 
him,  and  together  they  produced  those 
works  which  we  still  admire.  It  is  not  till 
the  time  of  Rembrandt  that  we  hear  of 
unappreciated  genius,  and  even  then 
Rembrandt  is  the  exception,  not  the  rule. 
It  is  this  lack  of  relation  between  the 
artist  and  the  public  that  has  created  the 
modern  exhibition,  and  the  exhibition, 
necessary  as  it  has  become,  is  a  necessary 
evil.  It  has  made  art,  what  it  should  never 
be,  competitive,  and  has  set  each  artist  to 
outshriek  his  rivals  in  the  bid  for  public 
notice.  First  it  created  those  bastard  forms 
of  art,  the  "gallery  picture"  and  the  "ma- 
chine du  Salon."  Then  it  begat  the  sensa- 
tional subject,  and  we  had  blood  and 
horror  as  our  daily  diet.  When  these  be- 
came too   common  to   attract  attention 

[19] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

there  was  nothing  left  for  it  but  eccentric- 
ity of  method;  and  that  eccentricity  has 
become  more  and  more  extreme  until  it 
has  seemed  that  modern  art  is  bent  upon 
emulation  of  the  Gadarene  swine  and  is 
rushing  down  a  steep  place  into  the  sea. 
Of  some  of  the  phases  of  ultra-modern 
art  I  find  it  difficult  to  speak  with  fairness 
or  with  any  patience.  I  should  wish  to  be- 
lieve in  a  certain  element  of  honest  con- 
viction in  it  and  to  accept  the  explanation 
of  its  adherents  that  it  is  a  revolt  against 
naturalism  and  an  effort  to  get  back  the 
abstract  quality  and  expressiveness  of  lines 
and  colors,  independently  of  their  repre- 
sentative character.  If  so,  the  pendulum 
has  swung  as  far  to  one  side  as  it  had 
swung  to  the  other.  But  there  seems  to  me, 
also,  to  be  a  vast  amount  of  mere  charla- 
tanism among  the  Neo-Impressionists 
and  the  Post-Impressionists,  and  an  even 
larger  amount  of  sheer  madness.  Van 
Gogh  cut  off  his  own  ear  when  he  failed 

[20] 


THE  CLASSIC  SPIRIT 

to  kill  his  friend  Gauguin  with  a  razor; 
Toulouse-Lautrec  had  a  keeper;  several 
others  committed  suicide  or  died  in  asy- 
lums. And  still  the  game  goes  on,  until  we 
have  men  painting  and  exhibiting  things 
made  up  of  outlines  that  look  like  the 
drawings  of  a  bad  boy  on  the  walls  of  an 
outhouse  and  of  flat  masses  of  primary 
colors  arranged  with  no  conceivable  rela- 
tion to  nature.  We  have  even  had  compo- 
sitions in  which  the  human  figure  is 
represented  by  a  series  of  triangles  and  a 
portrait  is  symbolized  by  an  arrangement 
of  cubes,  and  we  have  critics  writing 
books  and  articles  to  prove  that  this  is  the 
real  and  vital  art,  the  "art  of  the  future." 
It  seems  to  me  quite  evident  that  any 
further  "progress"  in  this  direction  is  im- 
possible. We  have  reached  the  edge  of  the 
cliff  and  must  turn  back  or  fall  into  the 
abyss.  It  may  be  that  such  a  turning  back 
is  impossible.  It  may  be  that  there  is  never 
again  to  be  a  sane  and  vigorous  art,  firmly 

[21] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

based  on  a  sound  tradition,  appealing  to 
and  understood  by  its  public  and  produc- 
ing naturally  and  without  convulsion 
something  for  which  that  public  has  a  use. 
But  if  such  an  art  is  to  exist  again  it  can 
only  be  by  the  reversal  of  those  tendencies 
that  have  brought  us  to  the  present  pass. 
The  scientific  spirit,  the  contempt  of  tra- 
dition, the  lack  of  discipline  and  the  exal- 
tation of  the  individual  have  very  nearly 
made  an  end  of  art.  It  can  only  be  restored 
by  the  love  of  beauty,  the  reverence  for 
tradition,  the  submission  to  discipline  and 
the  rigor  of  self-control.  We  must  get  back 
to  the  permanent  and  the  eternal — we 
must  regain  the  Classic  Spirit. 
This  spirit  has  much  more  in  common 
with  modern  naturalism  than  with  mod- 
ern emotionalism  and  modern  individual- 
ism, though  it  is  apart  from  either.  It  can 
make  room — has  always  made  room — for 
the  study  of  nature.  It  recognizes  that 
painting  is  essentially  an  imitative  art,  and 

[22] 


THE  CLASSIC  SPIRIT 

that  its  raw  material  is  the  aspect  of  the 
external  world.  It  can  use  any  amount  of 
knowledge  of  this  aspect,  and  it  has  no 
toleration  of  ignorance  or  indolence;  but 
it  also  recognizes  that  painting  is  an  art, 
not  a  science,  and  that  knowledge  un- 
assimilated  and  unsubdued  to  the  ruling 
purpose  of  art  is  useless  and  obstructive. 
The  primary  business  of  painting  is  to 
create  a  beautiful  surface,  beautifully 
divided  into  interesting  shapes,  enlivened 
with  noble  lines,  varied  with  lovely  and 
harmonious  colors.  Its  secondary  business 
is  to  remind  the  spectator  of  things  he  has 
seen  and  admired  in  nature,  and  to  create 
the  illusion  of  truth.  The  amount  of  actual 
truth  it  shall  contain  will  vary  with  the 
purpose  and  the  situation.  Very  little  will 
do  for  the  ornamentation  of  a  vase,  but 
an  easel-picture  may  contain  so  much  as 
to  seem — not  to  be — an  exact  record  of 
observed  facts.  If  it  break  the  connection 
altogether  and  cease  to  suggest  nature  it 

[23] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

may  still  be  art  but  it  will  cease  to  be  the 
art  of  painting.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
amount  of  art  it  shall  contain  is  constant. 
The  artistic  intention  must  dominate  every- 
thing, control  everything,  mould  every- 
thing to  its  purpose.  Its  sovereignty  must 
be  absolute  and  complete. 

But  so  to  control  facts,  and  to  bend  them 
to  one's  purpose,  one  must  know  them, 
and  know  them  vastly  better  than  he  who 
merely  copies  them.  There  is  a  certain 
kind  of  naturalism  that  is  only  less  indo- 
lent than  the  ignoring  of  nature.  With  a 
good  eye  and  a  good  deal  of  practice  you 
may  copy  a  head  or  an  arm,  pretty  well, 
without  much  intellectual  strain.  To  learn 
that  head  or  that  arm,  so  that  you  shall  be 
able  to  distinguish  the  essential  from  the 
accidental;  so  that  you  shall  know  what 
is  important  in  it,  and  to  your  purpose, 
and  what  is  not;  to  master  it,  in  a  word — 
that  is  a  man's  work  and  takes  the  whole 
of  the  man. 

[24] 


THE  CLASSIC  SPIRIT 

But  if  it  is  difficult  to  learn  nature,  as  a 
classicist  should  know  it,  it  is  even  more 
difficult  to  learn  art.  It  is  not  merely  that 
we  have,  to-day,  no  authoritative  tradition, 
and  must  build  one  for  ourselves.  If  we, 
in  this  country,  were  entirely  shut  off  from 
the  rest  of  the  world  and  from  all  the  art 
that  has  been  produced,  we  should,  quite 
naturally,  set  to  work  to  produce  an  art  of 
our  own,  and  we  should  produce  it.  It 
might  take  a  long  time  in  the  doing,  but 
we  should  do  it,  as  every  other  people  has 
done.  That  sort  of  natural  production  has, 
however,  become  forever  impossible.  Pho- 
tography and  modern  means  of  communi- 
cation have  brought  the  ends  of  the  earth 
together  and  rendered  all  ages  contem- 
porary. We  have  become  as  familiar  with 
the  art  of  Egypt  and  of  Assyria  as  with 
that  of  the  nineteenth  century,  and  the 
art  of  Japan  is  no  more  strange  to  us  than 
that  of  England.  We  know  all  art,  super- 
ficially— we   know    no    art    thoroughly. 

[25] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

We  have  all  the  traditions  to  study,  and 
we  have  none  of  our  own.  We  can  but  pick 
and  choose,  trying  to  disentangle  the  im- 
portant and  the  universal  from  the  unim- 
portant and  the  local  or  temporary,  to  de- 
cide what  is  proper  and  useful  for  us  and 
to  neglect  the  rest.  We  can  only  hope  to 
make  a  tradition  for  ourselves  out  of  many 
traditions  by  a  series  of  eliminations. 

The  task  is  a  tremendous  one  and,  as  I 
have  said,  I  do  not  know  whether  it  is  pos- 
sible of  performance.  But  there  are  rea- 
sons which  lead  me  to  believe  that  if  the 
thing  can  be  done  at  all  it  is  more  likely 
to  be  done  here  in  America  than  any- 
where else. 

Because  we  are  a  new  people  the  world 
seems  to  expect  of  us  a  new  art,  radically 
different  in  some  strange  way  from  the 
art  of  older  countries,  and  to  be  disap- 
pointed at  our  conservatism.  It  seems  to 
me  that  precisely  because  we  are  a  new 
people  our  art  might  have  been  expected 

[26] 


THE  CLASSIC  SPIRIT 

to  be  conservative.  We  have  not  yet  had 
enough  of  the  old  and  fine  things  to  be 
wearied  of  them.  We  do  not  find  it  neces- 
sary to  strain  our  invention  in  the  effort 
to  discover  some  new  spice  for  a  jaded 
appetite.  In  this  country  it  is  only  a  few 
critics  who  suffer  from  artistic  indigestion 
— the  rest  of  the  world  is  not  yet  tired  of 
hearing  Aristides  called  the  Just.  We  are, 
in  all  things,  at  bottom,  a  conservative 
people,  but  in  nothing  are  we  so  much  so 
as  in  all  matters  concerning  art.  Our  litera- 
ture, our  architecture,  our  painting  and 
sculpture  are  more  conservative  and  less 
influenced  by  fads  and  fashions  than  any 
now  going  in  the  world.  Of  our  great 
public  buildings  it  may  be  said,  and  it  has 
been  made  a  reproach  to  them,  that  there 
is  nothing  distinctively  American  about 
them.  Yet  such  buildings  are  produced 
nowhere  else,  to-day,  because  everywhere 
else,  architects  are  striving  to  produce 
something  new.  Here  they  are  willing  to 

[27] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

do  the  obvious — the  classic — thing  because 
the  classic  thing  has  not  yet  become  obvi- 
ous to  us.  If  we  go  on  doing  the  classic 
thing  in  architecture  until  its  language  has 
become  natural  and  easy  to  us,  there  is  a 
possibility  that  we  may  begin  to  use  it 
originally,  and  to  produce,  almost  without 
knowing  it,  a  national  style.  If  we  strive 
for  originality  now,  there  is  little  hope 
of  anything  better  than  the  architectural 
chaos  that  we  have  had  so  much  of. 

As  with  our  architecture,  so  it  is  with  our 
painting.  There  is,  already,  something 
like  an  "American  School"  of  painting, 
and  the  most  notable  characteristic  of  that 
school  is  its  conservatism.  It  is  by  no 
means  so  conservative  as  I  would  have  it, 
or  so  free  from  the  dangers  which  threaten 
all  modern  art,  but  it  is,  on  the  whole,  the 
sanest  and  soundest  school  existing. 

I  have  heard  this  conservatism  of  our 
American  artists  attributed  to  a  mere  de- 
sire of  popularity,  rather  than  to  anything 

[28] 


THE  CLASSIC  SPIRIT 

like  a  respect  for  law  and  for  tradition  on 
the  part  of  the  artists  themselves.  If  this 
were  true  there  would  still  be  something 
to  be  said  in  favor  of  it.  The  public  is  en- 
tirely right  if  it  demands  sanity  and  sobri- 
ety of  the  artist;  and  the  artist  is  entirely 
right  if,  without  compromising  his  artistic 
ideal,  he  strives  to  produce  something 
which  the  public  wants.  After  all,  why 
should  not  art  be  popular?  The  greatest 
art  always  has  been  so.  The  art  of  Phid- 
ias was  popular  in  Athens;  the  art  of 
Titian  was  popular  in  Venice;  the  art  of 
Raphael  was  popular  in  Rome  and  every- 
where else,  and  has  remained  popular  to 
this  day.  Under  proper  conditions  art 
would  always  be  popular,  for  the  artist 
would  be  one  of  the  people,  having  the 
same  ideals  and  thoughts  and  feelings  as 
the  public  he  served,  and  would,  quite 
naturally,  express  the  mind  of  his  public 
as  his  public  would  have  it  expressed.  I 
do  not  say  that  all  great  art  is  popular — 

[29] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

still  less  that  all  popular  art  is  great.  But 
I  do  say  that  when  art  is  not  popular 
something  is  wrong,  either  with  the  art 
or  with  the  public — or  with  both.  And 
when  inferior  art  is  popular  it  is  be- 
cause of  the  good  in  it,  not  because  of 
the  evil. 

But  it  is  not  true  that  the  mere  desire  of 
popularity — the  commercial  consideration 
of  what  will  sell — is  at  the  bottom  of  the 
comparative  conservatism  of  American 
painting.  American  painters  are  as  sincere 
and  as  earnest  as  any  in  the  world,  but 
their  sincerity  and  their  earnestness  are 
not  leading  them  to  the  search  for  novelty. 
In  all  countries  the  ordinary  painter,  like 
the  ordinary  man  of  any  kind,  takes  the 
easiest  way.  The  mass  of  the  painters  of 
this  country,  as  of  all  countries,  practise  the 
current  methods  of  the  time;  but  the  ex- 
ceptional men,  instead  of  striving  for  some- 
thing new,  are  trying  to  get  back  to  some- 
thing old.  They  are  trying  to  get  back 
[so]  ' 


THE  CLASSIC  SPIRIT 

composition  and  the  monumental  style; 
they  are  trying  to  get  back  the  expres- 
siveness of  the  line;  they  are  attempting 
purity  and  beauty  of  color;  they  are  even 
trying  to  revive  old  technical  methods, 
underpainting  in  tempera  and  using  glazes 
again,  which  modern  art  had  almost 
tabooed. 

I  would  not  have  you  think  there  is  little 
to  be  done — if  it  were  so  I  should  not  be 
making  this  plea  for  the  Classic  Spirit. 
There  is  very  much  to  be  done.  Our  art 
is  not  only  far  below  what  an  art  should 
be;  not  only  far  below  what  the  art  of  the 
Renaissance  was ;  it  is  still  far  below  what 
the  art  of  France  was  in  the  earlier  part  of 
the  nineteenth  century.  But  just  as  cer- 
tainly, I  believe,  is  it  the  best  art  now  being 
produced  in  the  world,  and  the  art,  of  all 
now  being  produced  in  the  world,  that  has 
the  most  in  common  with  the  great  art  of 
the  past  and  the  largest  promise  for  the 
art  of  the  future. 

[31] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

In  the  course  of  a  trip  to  Europe,  taken 
last  summer,  the  truth  of  this  statement 
was  strongly  impressed  upon  me.  It  is 
true  I  saw  little  of  modern  painting,  and  it 
was  the  study  of  older  art  that  made  me 
feel  the  kinship  to  it  of  the  art  we  are  mak- 
ing here.  The  more  I  saw  of  the  great 
masterpieces  of  the  Renaissance  the  more 
encouraged  I  felt  as  to  the  validity  of  the 
best  work  I  had  seen  at  home,  and  the 
more  I  found  myself  saying,  "This  is 
what  we,  in  America,  have  been  trying  to 
do."  For  the  other  end  of  the  comparison 
I  must  call  another  witness — one  out  of 
many.  Last  spring  a  very  distinguished 
American  painter  who  has  resided  for 
many  years  in  France  was  temporarily  in 
this  country,  and  was  taken  by  a  brother 
artist  to  see  the  exhibitions  of  the  Ten 
American  Painters  and  of  the  National 
Academy  of  Design.  The  exhibition  of  the 
Academy  was,  as  it  always  is,  crowded 
and  ill-displayed  from  lack  of  adequate 

[32] 


=s    E 
P  .8 


S     o 


j-5     _a> 

I      2 


THE  CLASSIC  SPIRIT 

galleries,  and  this  lack  of  space  and  crowd- 
ing had  kept,  as  it  always  does,  some  of 
our  best  artists  from  exhibiting  at  all.  It 
was  a  fair  average  display  of  current  work, 
not  a  selection  of  the  best.  Yet  in  the 
opinion  of  this  artist,  fresh  from  years  of 
foreign  residence,  it  was  of  an  extraor- 
dinarily high  average  of  merit,  which  it 
would  be  impossible  to  parallel,  to-day,  in 
Paris.  He  was  quite  as  enthusiastic  as  to 
the  smaller  exhibition,  saying  again,  that 
such  a  showing  of  ten  men  would  be  im- 
possible in  Paris;  to  which  the  not  too 
boastful  answer  was:  "We  have  twenty 
others  as  good,  here  in  America." 
There  is  plenty  of  such  testimony,  if  it 
were  necessary  to  cite  it.  We  do  not  know 
how  good  our  art  really  is.  We  are,  natu- 
rally enough,  afraid  of  our  own  judgment 
and  unable  to  believe  that  anything  can  be 
really  good  until  the  world  has  said  so  in 
unmistakable  terms.  To  such  of  the  gen- 
eral public  as  will  listen  to  me  I  would 

[33] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

say :  patronize  our  own  art.  Patronize  it  as 
discriminatingly  and  intelligently  as  possi- 
ble, but  patronize  it.  There  is  no  other  way 
in  which  you  can  do  so  much  good  to  art, 
and,  if  you  need  a  more  personal  motive, 
there  is  no  other  way  in  which  you  are  so 
likely  to  get  your  money's  worth. 
To  the  young  artist  my  message  would 
be  somewhat  different.  To  him  I  would 
say:  our  art  is,  indeed,  the  best  alive  to- 
day, but  the  best  is  but  poor  compared  to 
what  has  been  or  to  what  should  be.  Let 
us  strive  to  make  it  equal  to  any,  and  to 
that  end  let  us  fill  ourselves  with  the  Classic 
Spirit.  Let  us  strive  for  perfection,  recog- 
nizing that  perfection  is  only  to  be  attained 
by  discipline  and  by  self-control.  Let  us 
think  not  what  is  new,  but  what  is  good; 
not  what  is  easy  and  attractive,  but  what 
is  eternally  right.  Let  us  attach  ourselves 
to  what  is  noblest  in  the  art  of  the  past, 
trying  to  understand  the  reason  of  its 
nobility,  and  spend  ourselves  in  generous 

[34] 


THE  CLASSIC  SPIRIT 

emulation.  Let  us  believe  that  passion 
and  personality  will  find  their  way  into 
our  art,  if  we  have  them,  and  that  it  is  a 
poor  and  sapless  individuality  that  can  be 
killed  by  a  little  hard  work.  Only  in  this 
spirit  can  a  great  art  be  created.  Only  in 
this  spirit  can  a  true  school  of  painting 
exist.  If  we  have  this  spirit,  I  believe,  there 
is  at  least  a  chance  that  a  great  school  of 
painting  may  come  to  exist  here  in  our 
own  country. 


[35] 


II 

THE  SUBJECT  IN  ART 

The  idea  that  the  subject  of  a  work  of 
art  is  of  no  importance  whatever  has  been 
taught  us  so  thoroughly  and  has  become 
so  ingrained  in  us  that  it  seems  almost 
necessary  to  apologize  for  mentioning 
such  a  thing  at  all  to  a  modern  audience. 
We  have  been  so  deeply  impressed  with 
the  truth — for  it  is  a  truth  as  far  as  it  goes 
— that  it  is  the  amount  of  art  contained 
in  a  given  picture  which  counts,  not  the 
matter  on  which  that  art  is  expended,  that 
we  have  concluded  that  any  subject  will 
do  as  well  as  any  other,  and  that  there 
are  no  distinctions  of  subject  matter 
worth  considering.  We  have  so  completely 
learned  that  a  still-life  by  Chardin  may  be 
better  than  an  altar-piece  by  Carlo  Dolci 

[36] 


THE  SUBJECT  IN  ART 

that  we  have  forgotten  to  ask  whether  it 
can  be  as  good  as  Titian's  "Entomb- 
ment." 

One  may  be  quite  prepared  to  admit  that 
the  old  rigid  categories,  by  which  a  his- 
tory painter  was  always  superior  to  a 
genre  painter  and  any  figure  painter  was 
the  better  of  any  landscape  painter,  were 
a  trifle  absurd.  One  may  feel  that  the 
French  Academicians,  admitting  Watteau 
to  their  membership  only  under  the  slight- 
ing title  of  "Peintre  des  Fetes  Galantes," 
were  belittling  a  greater  man  than  any  of 
themselves.  One  may  welcome  the  mod- 
ern conquest  of  freedom  of  choice  as  a 
salutary  victory  for  common-sense — a 
victory  which  was,  after  all,  only  a  re- 
conquest;  for  the  old  masters  made  no 
distinctions  or  specialties,  every  master 
being  simply  a  painter,  and  painting  what 
came  his  way,  from  an  altar-piece  to  a 
signboard.  Yet  a  distinction  as  to  nobility 
of  subject  matter  will  still  subsist.  Some 

[37] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

subjects  will  permit  and  demand  the  exer- 
cise of  greater  powers  than  others,  and 
are,  in  so  far  as  they  do  this,  nobler  sub- 
jects. A  man  may  paint  a  jug,  a  loaf  of 
bread  and  a  dish  of  grapes  and  may  show, 
in  doing  so,  such  delicate  perception  of  gra- 
dations of  light,  such  fine  sense  of  color, 
such  mastery  of  surfaces  and  textures, 
above  all  such  a  modest  and  pure  spirit, 
as  shall  mark  him  a  true  artist  and  make 
him  forever  admirable  and  lovable.  But 
he  cannot  put  into  the  rendering  of  such 
a  subject  the  lofty  powers  of  design  and 
drawing  that  make  the  ceiling  of  the 
Sistine  Chapel  one  of  the  wonders  of  the 
world.  You  cannot  make  a  Michelangelo 
out  of  a  Chardin,  and  you  cannot  exert  the 
powers  of  a  Michelangelo  on  the  subjects 
of  Chardin.  It  may  be  better  to  succeed 
with  Chardin  than  to  fail  in  attempting 
to  be  a  Michelangelo,  but  the  powers  ex- 
ercised by  Michelangelo,  and  the  sub- 
jects which  permit  of  the  exercise  of  such 

[38] 


THE  SUBJECT  IN  ART 

powers,  are  eternally  the  nobler  and  the 
more  important. 

The  modern  view  was  admirably  ex- 
pressed in  a  favorite  saying  of  the  late 
Augustus  Saint-Gaudens  which  has  been 
frequently  quoted.  "You  may  do  any- 
thing," he  used  to  say,  "it  is  the  way  you 
do  it  that  counts."  As  he  meant  it,  the 
saying  is  a  true  one,  for  he  did  not  mean 
that  if  you  do  a  thing  cleverly  enough,  with 
great  technical  skill  and  command  of 
material,  that  alone  will  make  it  a  great 
work  of  art.  He  included  sincerity,  nobil- 
ity of  temper,  high  purpose,  a  love  of 
beauty  and  a  love  of  truth,  among  the 
elements  of  "the  way  you  do  it";  and  he 
would  have  placed  mere  virtuosity,  how- 
ever excellent  a  thing  in  itself,  far  below 
these  qualities  in  his  scale  of  values.  He 
would  have  been  the  first  to  admit  that 
there  is  a  sense  in  which  the  reverse  of  his 
proposition  is  equally  true.  If  the  thing 
done  be  noble  it  does  not  matter  how  it  is 

[39] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

done.  If  the  picture  or  the  statue  have 
dignity  of  conception  and  grandeur  of 
mass  and  line,  if  it  conveys  to  you  a  sense 
of  imaginative  grasp  on  the  part  of  the 
artist,  if  it  arouses  emotion  and  elevates 
the  mind,  it  may  be  ruggedly — almost 
clumsily — executed;  it  may  be  entirely 
devoid  of  surface  charm  and  technical 
dexterity  and  be  none  the  less  a  work  of 
the  highest  art. 

It  will  not  be  badly  executed,  for  the  feel- 
ing of  the  artist,  however  right  and  noble, 
can  only  be  expressed  b}'  technical  means, 
and  the  means  used  must,  necessarily,  be 
right  means  for  the  purpose  of  such  expres- 
sion. If  he  has  conveyed  his  meaning  it  is 
certain  that  he  has  sufficiently  mastered 
the  language  by  which  such  meanings  may 
be  conveyed.  But  it  is  by  what  he  has  said 
and  done  that  you  judge  him.  How  he  has 
said  and  done  it  may  be  a  question  of  great 
and  absorbing  interest  to  other  artists  and 
to  special  students  of  art,  but  is,  after  all, 

[40] 


3 
3* 


£ 


pq 


c 


3 


THE  SUBJECT  IN  ART 

a  subsidiary  question  to  the  world  for 
whom  he  works. 

I  can  think  of  no  better  instance  of  what 
I  mean  than  the  earliest  of  Jean  Francois 
Millet's  great  series  of  peasant  pictures, 
"The  Sower"  (PL  l),nowin  theVanderbilt 
Collection  at  the  Metropolitan  Museum 
of  New  York.  Before  he  created  it  Millet 
had  painted  a  number  of  charming  little 
pictures  of  nude  female  figures,  admirably 
executed,  supremely  able  in  their  way,  by 
no  means  to  be  despised,  but  not  what  he 
wanted  to  do — not  the  expression  of  his 
greatest  powers.  He  wanted  to  paint  an 
Epic  of  the  Soil,  and  the  first  book  of  it 
was  the  sowing  of  the  seed.  The  brilliant 
technical  method  of  his  earlier  work  was 
not  suited  to  his  present  purpose;  it  was 
too  suave,  too  rich,  too  easy,  to  give  the 
impression  of  rugged  strength  and  sim- 
plicity that  he  wished  to  convey.  He  had  to 
invent  a  new  handling  and  a  new  technical 
manner,  which  he  afterward  developed  to 

[41] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

such  perfection  that,  in  his  later  works, 
his  mere  painting  is  as  wonderful  as  his 
grand  design  and  powerful  drawing.  But 
in  this  first  essay  in  the  new  manner  he  is 
a  little  awkward,  almost  fumbling  and 
clumsy.  It  does  not  greatly  matter.  The 
largeness  of  silhouette,  the  august  gran- 
deur of  movement,  the  nobility  of  concep- 
tion carry  it  off.  The  thing  done  is  fine, 
and  any  rudeness  in  the  manner  of  the 
doing  becomes  a  matter  of  little  impor- 
tance. 

This  may  seem  like  a  question  of  treat- 
ment rather  than  a  question  of  subject, 
but  it  is  not  entirely  so.  The  two  things 
are  intimately  related.  Millet  could  not 
have  given  the  same  effect  of  nobility  if  his 
subject  had  not  been  intrinsically  noble. 
Doubtless  so  great  an  artist  was  able  to 
elevate  any  subject  by  the  largeness  of  his 
treatment  and  the  "three  pears  on  a 
plate  or  table"  may  well  have  been,  for 
a  painter,  such  a  revelation  of  his  power 

[42] 


THE  SUBJECT  IN  ART 

as  our  own  Wyatt  Eaton  found  them. 
Nevertheless,  if  Millet  had  painted  noth- 
ing but  a  series  of  such  subjects  he  would 
not  have  been  the  great  master  we  know, 
and  some  of  his  highest  powers  would 
never  have  been  exercised. 
The  highest  subject  for  the  exercise  of 
the  greatest  powers  of  a  painter  is  the 
human  figure,  nude  or  so  draped  as  to  ex- 
press, rather  than  to  conceal,  its  structure 
and  movement — the  subject  of  the  Greeks 
and  of  Michelangelo — and  this  is  the  sub- 
ject of  all  Millet's  work.  After  the  early 
days  he  seldom  did  an  entirely  unclothed 
figure,  though  his  "Goose  Girl  Bathing" 
is  one  of  the  most  wonderful  and  beautiful 
things  in  the  world,  but  it  was  the  nude 
he  was  continually  striving  to  express.  In 
the  costume  of  his  peasants  he  found  long- 
used  garments  taking  the  form  of  the  body, 
becoming  almost  a  part  of  it,  as  he  said  to 
Eaton,  and  "expressing  even  more  than 
the  nude  the  larger  and  simpler  forms  of 
nature." 

[43] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

The  human  figure,  its  bulk  and  form  and 
action,  that  was  the  subject  of  all  his 
works,  but  the  more  specific  subjects  of  the 
separate  pictures  were  equally  noble  and 
universal.  Doubtless  the  academic  makers 
of  categories  would  not  have  seen  or  under- 
stood this.  They  would  have  classed  him 
as  a  painter  of  peasants  with  Jan  Steen  or 
Ostade.  But  Millet  has  painted  nothing 
trivial  or  unimportant,  no  smokers  or 
card-players,  no  drinking  in  taverns  or 
dancing  in  rings.  Every  one  of  his  great 
pictures  has  a  subject  as  old  as  mankind, 
a  subject  of  immense  and  eternal  import 
to  the  race.  Plowing  and  sowing  and  reap- 
ing, the  hewing  of  wood  and  the  drawing 
of  water,  carding  and  spinning  and  the 
making  of  garments,  things  in  which  all 
mankind  is  interested  and  in  which  the 
bulk  of  mankind  always  has  been  and 
always  will  be  occupied,  these  are  his 
subjects.  Shepherds  have  watched  their 
sheep  from  the  time  before  Abraham  was, 
as  Millet's  shepherds  watch  theirs,  and 
[44] 


THE  SUBJECT  IN  ART 

mothers  have  fed  their  young  or  assisted 
"The  First  Steps"  since  the  Garden  of 
Eden.  Fortunately  for  his  purpose,  the 
life  of  the  tillers  of  the  soil  had  changed 
but  little  and  machinery  had  not  yet  in- 
vaded the  fields,  and  he  was  able  to  find  in 
the  daily  life  of  the  people  about  him  sub- 
jects truly  typical  of  the  history  of  hu- 
manity— subjects  much  more  essentially 
and  eternally  classic  than  the  straddling 
Greek  and  Roman  warriors  of  those  who 
arrogated  to  themselves  the  title  of  classi- 
cists. 

I  would  by  no  means  intimate  that  it  is 
the  duty  of  every  artist  to  attempt  sub- 
jects of  the  highest  class.  It  is  rather  his 
duty  to  choose  such  subjects  as  are  suited 
to  his  powers  and  give  greatest  scope  for 
the  development  of  the  qualities  he  pos- 
sesses. He  may  paint  genre  or  landscape 
or  portrait  or  still-life  and  be  a  true  artist 
whose  work  the  world  will  cherish,  for  the 
powers  necessary  to  success  in  any  of  these 

[45] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

fields  are  as  rare  as  they  are  truly  admira- 
ble. Still,  it  is  not  true  that  all  subjects 
are  alike,  or  that  success  with  one  kind  of 
subject  is  as  good  as  success  with  another. 
One  may  sincerely  admire  Frans  Hals  and 
be  sincerely  glad  that  he  painted  what  he 
could  do  so  well  instead  of  trying  to  do 
that  at  which  he  would  certainly  have 
failed;  one  is  not  therefore,  ready  to  rank 
him  with  Michelangelo  and  above  Raph- 
ael. One  may  derive  unalloyed  pleasure 
from  the  marvellous  skill  of  Vollon  and 
yet  be  certain  that  the  art  of  Millet  is  of  a 
higher  kind.  The  different  kinds  of  merit 
proper  to  the  different  kinds  of  subject 
can  never  be  quite  perfectly  united — there 
must  always  be  some  sacrifice,  some- 
where— but  now  and  then,  in  the  works  of 
the  greatest  masters,  so  much  of  technical 
beauty  and  perfection  is  found  united  to 
so  much  of  grandeur  of  conception  and 
largeness  of  style  that  we  may  receive 
from  one  work  the  largest  possible  sum  of 
f  4G  1 


THE  SUBJECT  IN  ART 

enjoyment.  These  are  the  world's  unap- 
proachable masterpieces. 

But  if  the  modern  world  has  come  to 
think  any  subject  as  good  as  any  other  it 
has  made  one  very  curious  exception  to 
the  rule.  It  has  come  to  think  what  it  calls 
"the  literary  subject"  an  actual  draw- 
back, and  to  consider  that  the  presence, 
in  a  work  of  art,  of  what  is  called  a  "  story" 
is  of  itself  enough  to  relegate  that  work  to 
an  inferior  rank.  Yet  how  such  an  opinion 
can  have  been  arrived  at,  in  view  of  the 
history  of  art  in  all  ages,  is  the  greatest 
of  puzzles.  For  art,  from  its  beginnings 
among  the  cave  men,  has  always  told 
stories;  and  its  twin  purposes  of  illustra- 
tion and  of  decoration  have  always  gone 
hand  in  hand,  illustration  being  generally, 
in  the  mind  of  the  artist  as  in  that  of  his 
audience,  the  more  important  of  the  two. 
The  Assyrian  celebrated  the  prowess  of 
his  kings  in  hunt  or  in  battle  and  the 
Egyptian  recorded  the  whole  life  of  the 

[47] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

people  upon  the  walls  of  royal  tombs.  The 
art  of  Greece  told  the  story  of  its  gods  and 
heroes  on  every  vase  and  on  every  temple 
front,  and  the  pediments  of  the  Parthenon 
recounted  the  legends  of  the  birth  of 
Pallas  and  of  the  founding  of  Athens. 

In  like  manner  the  art  of  the  Renaissance 
occupied  itself,  almost  exclusively,  with 
the  sacred  story  of  the  Old  and  New  Tes- 
taments or  with  the  legends  of  the  saints, 
from  the  time  that  Giotto  painted  the 
life  of  Francis  at  Assisi  and  the  life  of 
Christ  in  the  Arena  Chapel  until  Raphael 
spread  his  "Bible'*  upon  the  vaultings  of 
the  Loggia  of  the  Vatican.  The  greatest 
work  of  its  mightiest  master,  the  most  sub- 
lime and  awe-inspiring  creation  of  all  art, 
was  nothing  else  than  the  story  of  the 
Creation  and  the  Fall  of  Man,  so  told,  with 
such  clarity  and  such  power,  as  never 
story,  before  or  since,  was  told  in  colors. 
Even  the  Venetians,  those  lovers  of  the 
sumptuous  and  the  decorative,  the  crea- 

[48] 


THE  SUBJECT  IN  ART 

tors  of  what  we  know  as  genre,  could  not 
get  on  without  a  story  to  tell,  and  when  the 
story  seems  absent  to  us  it  is  because  it 
has  been  lost,  not  because  it  was  not  there. 
Titian's  enigmatic  picture  which  is  tra- 
ditionally known  as  the  "Sacred  and  Pro- 
fane Love"  is  now  said  to  represent 
"Medea  and  Venus,"  and  Giorgione's 
"Partie  Champetre"  and  "Soldier  and 
Gypsy"  are  thought  to  be  illustrations  of 
this  or  that  Italian  novel. 

It  may  be  that  in  these  later  instances 
the  story  was  a  concession  to  the  demands 
of  the  public,  and  that  while  the  ostensible 
subject  was  the  temptation  of  Medea  by 
Venus  the  real  subject  was  the  contrast 
between  a  nude  figure  and  a  draped  one. 
It  may  be  that  Giorgione  would  have  been 
equally  content  with  his  idyllic  dreams 
had  they  no  definite  context  in  his  mind  or 
in  the  minds  of  those  for  whom  he  painted. 
It  certainly  was  not  so  with  the  earlier 
masters,  and  as  certainly  it  was  not  so  with 

[49] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

that  later  master,  Rembrandt.  It  is  a  com- 
monplace of  criticism  that  Dutch  art  told 
no  stories,  and  that  the  Dutch  burghers, 
for  whom  it  was  created,  asked  nothing  of 
it  but  the  portraiture  of  themselves  and 
their  wives  or  of  their  daily  life  and  their 
tame  and  comfortable  country.  The  artist 
who  attempted  more  did  so  at  his  peril, 
and  Ruysdael  paid  for  his  love  of  rocks 
and  waterfalls  as  Rembrandt  paid  for  his 
love  of  stories,  with  poverty  and  discour- 
agement. Yet  Rembrandt  was  always  tell- 
ing stories.  His  public  did  not  want  them ; 
it  wanted  nothing  of  him  but  portraits  that 
should  be  like;  and  when  his  portraits 
ceased  to  be  neat  and  obvious  likenesses  it 
wanted  nothing  of  him  whatever.  Yet  he 
painted  stories  over  and  over  again,  his 
etchings  are  filled  with  stories,  and,  more 
than  all,  his  drawings,  which  the  public 
never  saw,  are  one  long  series  of  illustra- 
tions. He  was  haunted  with  stories  from 
which  he  could  not  escape  and  to  which 

[50] 


THE  SUBJECT  IN  ART 

he  returned  again  and  again,  illustrating 
their  every  phase  and  turning  and  twist- 
ing them  in  every  aspect.  There  is  the 
story  of  Lot,  the  story  of  Joseph,  the  story 
of  Tobit,  for  each  of  which  he  made  al- 
most numberless  drawings,  and  the  story 
of  Christ,  which  is  the  subject  of  his  great- 
est etchings.  He  was  a  great  painter,  a 
great  master  of  light  and  shade,  a  portrait 
painter  who  has  excelled  all  others  in  the 
rendering  of  the  human  soul  behind  the 
features ;  but  more  than  anything  else  he 
was  a  great  story-teller,  and  his  imagina- 
tive grasp  of  a  story  and  his  power  of  so 
telling  it  that  it  shall  seem  real  and  imme- 
diate to  us,  as  if  it  had  actually  happened 
before  our  very  eyes,  is  perhaps  the  most 
wonderful  of  his  many  wonderful  gifts. 

So  great  has  been  the  dominance  of  the 
story  in  art  that  even  the  landscape  paint- 
ers of  the  seventeenth  century,  to  whose 
main  purpose  story-telling  was  in  no  way 
necessary,  nearly  always  put  in  a  few  fig- 

[51] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

ures  supposed  to  represent  the  charac- 
ters in  some  legend,  sacred  or  profane;  and 
the  light  and  frivolous  art  of  the  eigh- 
teenth century  tells  stories  too,  though  the 
stories  may  be  as  light  and  frivolous  as  the 
manner  of  telling. 

But  if  you  wish  to  know  how  seriously 
the  telling  of  the  story  may  be  taken  by 
a  great  artist  you  must  read  the  fragments 
of  criticism  left  us  by  that  great  nine- 
teenth century  classicist,  Jean  Francois 
Millet.  In  his  letters,  in  the  fragments  of 
his  conversation  recorded  for  us  by  others, 
in  his  few  formal  announcements  of  his 
beliefs  about  art,  you  will  find  hardly  any- 
thing else  mentioned.  For  all  he  says  about 
them,  such  things  as  drawing,  or  color,  or 
the  handling  of  his  material,  might  as  well 
not  exist.  Apparently  his  whole  mind  is 
concentrated  on  the  story  of  the  picture 
and  the  manner  of  its  telling — everything 
else  is  of  value  only  as  it  helps  the  clarity 
and  force  of  the  expression.  For  him  "Art 

[52] 


THE  SUBJECT  IN  ART 

is  a  language  and  ...  all  language  is  in- 
tended for  the  expression  of  ideas."  "The 
artist's  first  task  is  to  find  an  arrangement 
that  will  give  full  and  striking  expression 
to  his  idea."  And  again,  "To  have  painted 
things  that  mean  nothing  is  to  have  borne 
no  fruit."  Hear  him  discoursing  on  a  • 
print,  after  his  favorite  master  Poussin,  of 
a  man  upon  his  death-bed  (PL  2) :  "How 
simple  and  austere  the  interior ;  only  that 
which  is  necessary,  no  more ;  the  grief  of 
the  family,  how  abject;  the  calm  move- 
ment of  the  physician  as  he  lays  the  back 
of  his  hand  upon  the  dying  man's  heart; 
and  the  dying  man,  the  care  and  sorrow  in 
his  face,  and  his  hands  .  .  .  they  show  age, 
toil,  and  suffering."  Not  one  word  about 
anything  else — all  other  things  are  but 
means — the  telling  of  the  story  is  the  end 
and  the  essential.  He  has  given  us,  in  a 
letter  to  a  critic  of  art,  a  more  formal  pro- . 
fession  of  faith — a  brief  statement  of  what 
he  thought  fundamental  in  art  and  of  the 

[53] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

principles  by  which  he  was  consciously 
guided  in  his  own  work. 

"The  objects  introduced  in  a  picture," 
he  says,  "should  not  appear  to  be  brought 
together  by  chance,  and  for  the  occasion, 
but  should  have  a  necessary  and  indis- 
pensable connection.  I  want  the  people 
that  I  represent  to  look  as  if  they  belonged 
to  their  place,  and  as  if  it  would  be  im- 
possible for  them  to  think  of  being  any- 
thing else  but  what  they  are.  A  work  must 
be  all  of  a  piece,  and  persons  and  objects 
must  always  be  there  for  a  purpose.  I  wish 
to  say  fully  and  forcibly  what  is  neces- 
sary, so  much  so  that  I  think  things  feebly 
said  had  better  not  be  said  at  all,  since  they 
are,  as  it  were,  spoilt  and  robbed  of  their 
charm.  But  I  have  the  greatest  horror  of 
useless  accessories,  however  brilliant  they 
may  be.  These  things  only  serve  to  distract 
and  weaken  the  general  effect." 

The  Classic  Spirit,  in  its  austerest  form, 
as  it  envisages  the  subject  and  its  treat- 

[54] 


THE  SUBJECT  IN  ART 

ment,  could  not  be  more  clearly  expressed ; 
and  Millet's  practice  was  strictly  in  accord 
with  his  theories.  His  pictures  are  seldom 
so  specifically  related  to  a  written  text  as 
are  those  of  Rembrandt,  but  each  of  his 
characters  has  a  history  and  a  station,  and 
"could  never  think  of  being  other  than 
what  it  is."  One  of  his  very  great  works 
is  "The  Woman  Carrying  Water,"  which 
hangs  beside  "The  Sower"  in  the  Metro- 
politan Museum.  Of  its  purely  artistic 
merits  I  may  have  occasion  to  speak  later, 
but  what  Millet  meant  it  to  represent — 
the  story  he  had  to  tell — he  has  himself 
put  into  words  so  perfectly  that  one  must 
quote  him  again. 

He  says:  "I  have  tried  to  show  that  she 
is  neither  a  water-carrier  nor  yet  a  servant, 
but  simply  a  woman  drawing  water  for 
the  use  of  her  household — to  make  soup 
for  her  husband  and  children.  I  have  tried 
to  make  her  look  as  if  she  were  carrying 
neither  more  nor  less  than  the  weight  of 

[55] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

the  buckets  full  of  water ;  and  that  through 
the  kind  of  grimace  which  the  load  she 
bears  forces  her  to  make,  and  the  blinking 
of  her  eyes  in  the  sunlight,  you  should  be 
able  to  see  the  air  of  rustic  kindness  on 
her  face.  I  have  avoided,  as  I  always  do, 
with  a  sort  of  horror,  everything  that  might 
verge  on  the  sentimental.  On  the  con- 
trary, I  have  tried  to  make  her  do  her  work 
simply  and  cheerfully,  without  regarding 
as  a  burden  this  act  which,  like  other 
household  duties,  is  part  of  her  daily  task, 
and  the  habit  of  her  life.  I  have  also  tried 
to  make  people  feel  the  freshness  of  the 
well,  and  to  show  by  its  ancient  air  how 
many  generations  have  come  there  before 
her  to  draw  water." 
Now,  if  I  had  told  you  that  this  was  what 
I  read  in  the  picture,  you  might  imagine 
that  I  had  read  into  it  what  Millet  himself 
had  never  thought  of  putting  there;  but 
you  have  the  artist's  own  word  for  it  that 
this  "literature"  was  intentional — was,  in- 

[56] 


in   j* 


THE  SUBJECT  IN  ART 

deed,  the  main  intention.  You  cannot 
have  that  assurance  often,  and  in  the  pict- 
ure I  am  going  to  mention  next  you  will 
have  to  use  your  own  judgment  as  to 
whether  or  not  I  am  right  in  my  reading. 
It  is  a  picture  owned  by  a  collector  in  Chi- 
cago, an  exquisite  work  by  a  true  painter 
who,  at  the  time  it  was  painted,  came 
nearer  to  the  quality  of  the  old  Dutch  mas- 
ters than  almost  any  other  modern  has 
done — it  is  Alfred  Stevens's  "Une  Veuve" 
(PI.  3).  It  is,  I  say,  exquisitely  painted, 
and  would  be  delightful  to  look  at  if  it  had 
no  story  whatever;  but  what  I  want  you 
to  observe,  now,  is  the  way  the  story  is 
told.  It  dates  from  the  sixties  of  the  last 
century,  and  the  costume  and  the  acces- 
sories are  of  the  period  to  which  it  belongs. 
In  an  elegant  interior,  panelled  in  white 
and  gold,  a  pretty  young  widow  in  a  vo- 
luminous black  gown  leans  back  in  the 
depths  of  a  red  velvet  divan,  her  hands 
clasped  in  her  lap  with  a  gesture  of  ner- 

[57] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

vous  indecision.  On  the  slender-legged 
stand  beside  her  are  a  little  silver  bell,  to 
show  that  she  is  accustomed  to  being 
waited  upon,  a  bound  book,  and  a  couple 
of  paper-covered  novels — just  enough  to 
indicate  a  refined  and  rather  unoccupied 
existence.  On  the  seat  of  the  divan  lies  a 
great  bouquet  of  flowers  in  its  wrapping 
of  white  paper,  and  on  the  floor  at  her 
feet  is  the  envelope,  seal  uppermost,  of  the 
note  that  has  come  with  the  flowers.  The 
story  is  very  unlike  Millet's.  Its  mixture 
of  sentiment  and  delicate  irony  is  as  dif- 
ferent from  Millet's  simple  earnestness  as 
the  rank  of  this  fashionable  lady  is  dif- 
ferent from  that  of  Millet's  peasant  wom- 
an. But  the  art  of  the  telling  is  of  the 
same  kind — there  is  the  same  clarity,  the 
same  precision,  the  same  reticence.  "Per- 
sons and  things  are  here  for  a  purpose" 
and  there  is  not  one  detail  that  is  not  neces- 
sary, not  one  "useless  accessory." 
There  are  a  number  of  Stevens's  early 

[58] 


THE  SUBJECT  IN  ART 

pictures  of  much  the  same  quality,  and  if 
any  one  is  tempted  to  think  their  fine 
literary  tact  a  matter  of  no  moment,  and 
entirely  beside  the  bargain,  he  had  better 
compare  them  with  the  same  artist's  later 
works,  in  which  the  love  of  elegance  deteri- 
orates into  a  love  of  bric-a-brac  and  the 
painter  of  genteel  comedy  becomes  little 
better  than  a  very  skilful  master  of  still- 
life. 

I  hope  I  have  proved  that  much  of  our 
modern  scorn  for  the  story-telling  picture 
is  undeserved,  and  that  there  must  be 
something  worthy  of  serious  attention  in 
a  side  of  art  that  has  occupied  the  greatest 
masters  since  the  practice  of  painting  be- 
gan. Yet  there  must  be  some  cause  for  that 
scorn — there  must  be  some  reason  why 
the  mere  epithet  "story-telling,"  applied 
to  a  picture,  has  become  a  term  of  re- 
proach. I  think  there  are  three  main  rea- 
sons for  this  state  of  affairs :  painters  have 
told  stories  that  were  too  trivial ;  they  have 

[591 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

told  stories  that,  however  important  and 
interesting  in  themselves,  were  ill-fitted 
for  pictorial  narration;  and  they  have, 
partly  because  of  this  initial  fault  in  the 
choice  of  the  story  to  be  told,  told  stories 
badly. 
I  have  heard  a  little  anecdote  that  illus- 
trates pretty  well  one  of  these  faults,  as 
well  as  the  modern  suspicion  of  any  inter- 
est in  a  picture  other  than  the  purely  pic- 
torial. A  modern  painter  had  painted  a 
girl  resting  upon  the  sea-steps  of  a  Vene- 
tian palace,  and  on  the  step  below  her  he 
had  painted  a  little  crab  at  which  she  was 
looking.  But  his  conscience  troubled  him 
on  the  score  of  that  crab,  and  he  gravely 
consulted  a  friend  as  to  whether  it  ought 
not  to  be  painted  out,  as  introducing  too 
much  literary  interest!  Well,  I  laughed,  at 
first,  when  I  heard  the  tale,  but  afterward 
I  found  myself  sympathizing  with  the 
artist  and  his  scruples.  I  could  not  swallow 
that  crab  myself!  And  then  it  occurred  to 

[60] 


THE  SUBJECT  IN  ART 

me  that  perhaps  it  was  only  the  painter's 
reason  that  was  wrong.  The  crab  was 
not  "too  literary";  it  was  not  literary 
enough.  The  interest  it  introduced  was  a 
slight  and  trivial  one.  As  regards  the  girl 
it  was  a  "useless  accessory"  and  the  story 
of  the  girl  and  her  fatigue,  or  her  idle 
dreams,  would  have  been  better  told  with- 
out it. 

To  be  fitted  for  pictorial  treatment  a  story 
should  have  some  degree  of  importance 
and  of  universal  interest,  and  it  should  be 
such  a  story  as  may  be  told  in  lines  and 
colors,  with  no  necessary  reliance  on  the 
written  word,  or  on  anything  outside  its 
frame,  for  the  explanation  of  its  essential 
features.  Then  it  must  be  told  "fully  and 
forcibly,"  without  the  frittering  away  of 
interest  on  the  unimportant.  Even  the 
light  stories  of  eighteenth-century  French 
art  have  something  of  this  necessary  uni- 
versality— they  appeal  to  a  permanent,  if 
not  a  high,  element  in  human  nature.  The 

[61] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

stories  of  Michelangelo  and  of  Millet  are 
of  the  most  fundamental  and  universal 
interest  to  mankind.  The  intelligibility 
of  a  story  may  be  greatly  aided  by  the 
degree  in  which  it  is  well  known  to  every 
one,  and  Rembrandt's  Bible  stories,  like 
Michelangelo's  myths  of  the  Creation,  are 
greatly  helped  by  this  universal  knowl- 
edge, though  his  own  genius  for  pictorial 
imagination  was  his  main  reliance.  It  is 
when  we  have,  in  art,  stories  that  of  them- 
selves have  little  import,  as  with  so  many 
modern  English  pictures ;  stories  that  can- 
not be  told  by  the  means  at  the  disposal  of 
the  painter,  as  often  with  Hogarth ;  stories 
that  are  poorly  or  falsely  and  melodra- 
matically told,  as  with  Greuze,  that  the 
story-telling  picture  justifies  our  contempt 
of  it. 

You  have  heard  Millet  describe  Poussin's 
manner  of  painting  a  death-bed  scene 
— now  see  Greuze's  way  of  doing  it  in 
"The  Punished  Son"  (PL  4).  Look  at  the 

[62] 


THE  SUBJECT  IN  ART 

daughter  at  the  left  whose  child  tugs  at 
her,  note  her  gesture  of  despair  and  the 
careful  disarrangement  of  her  fichu — 
for,  even  in  his  most  moral  mood,  Greuze 
must  always  give  a  little  spice  for  the 
voluptuary.  Look  at  the  other  daughter, 
beyond  the  bed,  at  her  wild  excitement 
and  outstretched  arm,  as  if  she  were  dash- 
ing a  scorpion  from  the  brow  of  the  dying 
man.  Look  at  the  attitudes  of  any  of  the 
figures,  and  try  to  imagine  for  a  moment 
that  you  are  a  spectator  of  anything  but 
a  theatrical  performance.  This  is  not 
story-telling,  or  is  story-telling  only  in  the 
sense  in  which  we  were  reproached  with 
the  habit  in  our  infancy.  It  is  telling  lies. 
And  the  jugs  and  warming  pans  and 
crutches  that  clutter  the  floor  are  perfect 
examples  of  useless  accessories. 

So  much  for  how  not  to  tell  a  story:  for 
an  instance  of  the  story  that  cannot  be 
told  clearly  in  art  we  shall  go  to  Hogarth. 
He  was  a  real  painter,  almost  a  great  one, 

[63] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

at  his  best,  but  he  wanted  to  do  more  than 
painting  can  properly  do.  So,  in  his  series 
of  moral  tales,  he  is  forced  to  all  sorts  of 
expedients  to  make  his  meaning  plain.  We 
will  take  him  at  his  best  and  most  mature, 
in  the  admirably  painted  "Marriage 
A-la-Mode."  The  first  scene  represents 
"The  Contract"  (PI.  5),  and  the  artist 
wants  to  tell  us  all  sorts  of  things.  This  is 
a  loveless  marriage,  so  the  contracting 
couple  are  placed  ostentatiously  back  to 
back,  although  there  is  nothing  for  the 
bridegroom  to  look  at  and  he  must  smirk 
at  empty  space.  The  bride  is,  for  the  same 
reason,  playing  with  her  engagement  ring 
on  her  handkerchief,  instead  of  leaving  it 
on  her  finger;  and,  as  she  is  afterward  to 
have  an  affair  with  the  young  lawyer,  he 
is  already  flirting  with  her  before  both 
families.  The  new  house  which  is  building 
for  the  young  couple  is  seen  through  the 
open  window  and,  lest  you  should  think 
it  any  other  house,  the  parson  is  compar- 

[64] 


■3$f!k  ■ 

M.             -  \A  ■■>■      ^'•l 

fat  ■"  1  < 

Plate  i). — "The  Virgin  in  Glory,"  by  Perugino. 


In  the  Pinacoteca,  Bologna. 


THE  SUBJECT  IN  ART 

ing  it  with  the  plainly  lettered  plan.  The 
father  of  the  bridegroom  has  an  actual 
family  tree  to  which  he  can  point  with  one 
hand  while  he  points  to  himself  with  the 
other,  and  the  document  which  the  bride's 
father  offers  him  is  conspicuously  labelled 
"Mortgage."  Even  the  contract  must  be 
carefully  held  side  wise,  as  no  one  would 
ever  hold  it,  in  order  that  the  endorsement 
may  be  read.  Well,  the  story  is  certainly 
told,  but  not  by  pictorial  means.  And 
Hogarth  cannot  escape  from  this  shoring 
up  and  buttressing  of  his  story  by  the 
written  word.  In  the  second  scene  of  this 
same  series  we  have  the  steward's  packet 
with  the  paper  on  top  marked  "Bill"  in 
large  letters,  and  the  book  on  the  floor  is 
opened  at  the  title-page — which,  by  the 
way,  is  where  a  title-page  never  is — that 
we  may  read  "Hoyle  on  "Whist,"  and  know 
what  game  was  playing  the  night  before. 
The  only  alternative  to  this  sort  of  thing, 
if  one  insists  on  telling  stories  of  this  elab- 

[65] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

orate  sort,  is  to  paint  a  picture  which  may 
be  fairly  comprehensible  after  one  has 
read  the  catalogue,  but  which  means  any- 
thing or  nothing  without  its  title. 

It  is  the  unfitness  of  many  stories  for 
telling  in  the  language  of  painting  that 
makes  so  many  historical  pictures  alto- 
gether unsatisfactory  and  dismal.  Let  us 
suppose  an  American  painter  proposing 
to  paint  the  Signing  of  the  Emancipation 
Proclamation.  Here  is  a  subject  of  great 
dignity — of  overwhelming  importance — 
but  how  is  its  dignity  and  importance  to 
be  expressed  ?  You  will  have  a  number  of 
people  gathered  about  a  table,  and  one 
of  them  will  be  signing  something,  but  un- 
less you  resort  to  a  written  label  you  have 
no  means  of  telling  what  that  something 
is.  Even  so,  I  have  conceded  too  much. 
Some  one  is  writing  something,  but  it  may 
be  anything,  from  his  signature  on  a  State 
paper  to  a  washing-list,  so  far  as  you  can 
tell  from  the  action  itself.  The  best  you 

[66] 


THE  SUBJECT  IN  ART 

can  make  of  the  subject  is  a  portrait 
group,  like  Rembrandt's  "Syndics  of  the 
Cloth  Hall."  As  such  it  may  be  admirable, 
but  it  will  not  be  the  Signing  of  the 
Emancipation  Proclamation  except  by 
courtesy,  call  it  what  you  please. 

Or  take  another  historical  subject  that 
has  actually  been  painted,  "Washington 
Crossing  the  Delaware."  Here  there  are 
more  pictorial  elements — the  river  with 
its  floating  ice  is  a  good  subject  for  a  land- 
scape painter,  and  the  boats  with  their 
crews,  in  strong  action,  rowing  or  pushing 
off  the  ice  cakes,  afford  fine  opportunities 
for  figure  drawing.  But  can  you  tell  what 
went  before  this  crossing  or  is  to  come 
after  it?  Can  you  give  any  notion  of  the 
real  and  essential  meaning  of  the  incident  ? 
And  how  are  you  to  make  your  hero  con- 
spicuous among  the  crowd  of  other  actors  ? 
You  can  make  him  stand  when  others 
are  seated ;  you  can  wrap  him  in  a  blow- 
ing cloak  and  give  him  an  expression  of 

[67] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

brooding  intentness;  and  you  can  relieve 
his  well-known  profile  against  the  sky  and 
put  an  American  flag  behind  him.  You 
will  have  made  it  plain  that  your  subject 
is  Washington  crossing  a  river  in  the  win- 
ter, and  perhaps  the  historical  knowledge 
of  your  audience  may  be  expected  to  sup- 
ply the  rest — but  you  will  have  rendered 
your  picture  immortally  absurd. 

So  great  is  this  difficulty  of  the  historical 
subject  that  I  can  recall  only  one  instance 
in  the  whole  history  of  art  where  it  is  en- 
tirely and  satisfactorily  overcome,  Velaz- 
quez's "Surrender  of  Breda"  (PL  6).  The 
subject  was,  for  once,  admirably  fitted  to 
expression  in  graphic  art,  and  the  artist 
has,  to  use  Millet's  phrase  again,  "found 
an  arrangement  that  gives  full  and  strik- 
ing expression  to  his  idea."  It  is  the  sur- 
render of  a  town  that  is  taking  place,  and 
the  character  of  the  background  makes  it 
sufficiently  plain  that  the  scene  is  in  the 
Low  Countries — it  is  possible,  indeed, 
r  68  1 


THE  SUBJECT  IN  ART 

that,  to  one  who  knows  the  region  well 
enough,  the  localization  is  even  more 
precise.  The  types  and  the  costumes  are 
sufficient  evidence  that  it  is  a  Dutch  com- 
mander who  is  surrendering  to  a  Spaniard, 
and  we  do  not  need  to  recognize  the  por- 
traits of  Justin  of  Nassau  and  Spinola  to 
understand  all  that  is  necessary.  To  the 
right  a  great  horse,  a  few  heads,  and 
twenty  or  thirty  tall  lances  against  the 
sky  figure  the  Spanish  army.  To  the  left 
are  the  guards  of  the  Dutch  general  with 
their  shorter  pikes  and  halberds.  Justin 
bends  low  before  his  victor,  who  places  a 
kindly  hand  upon  his  shoulder,  and  be- 
tween their  dark  figures  is  a  shield-shaped 
space  of  brilliant  light  in  the  midst  of 
which,  and  almost  in  the  exact  middle  of 
the  picture,  the  key  of  the  surrendered 
city  stands  out  sharply.  It  is  the  key  of 
the  composition  and  of  the  story  no  less 
than  of  Breda. 
If  the  story  to  be  told  could  often  be  ex- 

[69] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

pressed  as  clearly  and  as  fully  as  it  is  in 
this  instance,  we  should  hear  less  objec- 
tion to  historical  painting  as  a  manner  of 
artistic  production. 

But  it  is  just  in  the  one  situation  where 
there  is  a  natural  public  demand  for  the 
historical  subject  that  that  kind  of  subject, 
particularly  in  this  country,  is  most  dif- 
ficult to  handle  successfully.  In  asking 
that  our  public  buildings  should  be 
decorated  with  paintings  relating  to  our 
own  history  our  people  are  only  asking 
what  every  other  people  has  asked  from 
time  immemorial.  Unfortunately  our  his- 
tory is  short,  our  modern  costume  form- 
less and  ugly,  and  American  historical 
subjects  particularly  unfitted  for  pictorial 
and,  especially,  for  decorative  treatment. 
I  have  said  that  the  highest  walk  of  figure 
painting  concerns  itself  with  "the  human 
figure,  nude  or  so  draped  as  to  express 
rather  than  to  conceal  its  structure  and 
movement,"  but  the  costume  of  the  last 

[70] 


THE  SUBJECT  IN  ART 

three  centuries  lends  itself  little  to  such 
treatment  of  the  figure,  and  the  painter 
who  cares  greatly  for  the  expressiveness 
of  the  body  will  feel  little  attraction  to  belt 
buckles  and  brass  buttons.  Again,  mural 
painting,  from  its  association  with  arch- 
itecture, is  especially  an  art  of  formal  and 
symmetrical  composition,  of  monumental 
arrangements  and  balanced  lines  and 
masses,  and  such  composition  necessarily 
destroys  all  illusion  of  veracity  in  the  de- 
piction of  an  historical  incident.  Finally, 
decoration  demands  sumptuous  and  bril- 
liant, or,  at  any  rate,  studied  and  beauti- 
ful, color;  and  too  many  of  our  historical 
subjects  afford  little  opportunity  for  this. 
Thus  a  love  for  the  human  figure,  a  love 
for  monumental  and  truly  decorative 
composition,  and  a  love  for  color,  all  tend 
to  lead  our  mural  painters  away  from  the 
historical  subject  and  toward  an  allegori- 
cal, or  rather  symbolic,  treatment,  and 
this  tendency  is  strong  almost  in  exact  pro- 

[71] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

portion  as  the  artist  affected  by  it  is  a  real 
decorator  by  temperament  and  training. 
Nor  is  the  tendency  a  new  one;  it  has  ex- 
isted since  there  was  an  art  of  painting. 
The  walls  of  Italy  are  covered  with  fres- 
cos and  the  palace  of  the  Doges  is  lined 
with  paintings,  nearly  all  of  which  were 
intended  to  have  some  historical  implica- 
tion, but  there  are,  apart  from  the  render- 
ings of  sacred  narrative,  relatively  few 
strictly  historical  pictures  among  them, 
and  these  are  seldom  the  most  effective. 
The  most  triumphantly  decorative  are 
allegories,  naif  in  the  Spanish  Chapel  or 
the  ceilings  of  Pinturicchio,  superb  in 
Veronese's  "Venice  Enthroned." 

It  is  true  that  the  strictly  historical  sub- 
ject may,  on  occasion,  be  so  treated  as  to 
reduce  its  essentially  undecorative  char- 
acter to  a  minimum.  You  may  simplify  it 
in  arrangement  and,  in  some  cases,  arrive 
almost  at  a  monumental  composition; 
you  may  eliminate  light  and  shade  and 

[72] 


^2 


H-3 


THE  SUBJECT  IN  ART 

avoid  strong  contrasts  and  projecting 
modelling;  you  may  weaken  its  pictorial 
character  until  it  consents  to  stay  on  the 
wall,  and  to  do  little  harm  to  the  architect- 
ural ensemble,  if  it  does  no  good  to  it. 
But  when  all  is  done  it  will  not  be  essential 
decoration.  You  will  still  have  to  choose 
between  historical  pictures  which  are,  at 
best,  imperfectly  and  negatively  decora- 
tive, and  have  lost  much  of  their  force  in 
becoming  so,  and  true  monumental  dec- 
orations, perfectly  suited  to  their  place 
and  function,  but  symbolical  rather  than 
real  in  their  treatment  of  history. 

If  you  believe — and  I  cannot  see  how 
you  can  help  believing  it — that  the  first 
end  of  a  decoration  is  to  decorate,  there 
can  be  no  doubt  which  you  will  prefer. 

The  choice,  once  made,  will  carry  with  it 
much  more  than  an  increase  of  decorative 
beauty — it  will  greatly  enlarge  the  scope 
of  the  ideas  you  may  express,  and  increase 
the  clarity  and  force  with  which  you  may 

[73] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

express  them.  I  chose,  a  while  ago,  to 
illustrate  the  difficulty  of  the  purely  his- 
torical subject,  the  theme  of  the  Signing 
of  the  Emancipation  Proclamation,  and 
pointed  out  how  it  reduced  itself,  if  realis- 
tically treated,  to  a  man  writing  at  a  table, 
in  the  presence  of  a  number  of  other  men. 
But  admit  the  element  of  symbolism  and 
the  difficulty  vanishes  at  once.  You  may 
paint  "Lincoln  Emancipating  the  Slave," 
in  a  way  that  shall  be  perfectly  intelligible 
to  every  one,  and  you  may  go  further  and 
convey  the  whole  meaning  of  the  struggle 
for  freedom  and  suggest  the  vast  up- 
heaval of  the  Civil  War  by  a  use  of  alle- 
gorical figures.  Velazquez  was  particularly 
happy,  in  his  "Surrender  of  Breda,"  in 
finding  a  subject  suited  to  realistic  ex- 
pression and  in  finding,  also,  the  exact 
expression  needed.  But  even  that  prince 
of  naturalists,  when  he  would  paint  "the 
Expulsion  of  the  Moors,"  had  to  fall  back 
on  allegory  like  all  the  world  before  him. 

[74] 


THE  SUBJECT  IN  ART 

From  the  point  of  view  of  expression  as 
from  the  point  of  view  of  form  there  is 
really  no  alternative.  We  must  admit  the 
symbolical  or  we  must  give  up  monu- 
mental and  decorative  painting  altogether. 
To  what  degree  the  symbolical  element 
shall  displace  entirely  the  historical  must 
be  a  question,  largely,  of  the  temper  and 
ability  of  the  artist.  Some  will  feel  most  at 
home  in  an  atmosphere  of  pure  symbolism, 
where  nothing  shall  hamper  their  sense  of 
beauty  or  intrude  considerations  of  fact  or 
costume.  Others  will  be  able  to  include  a 
good  deal  of  fact  and  costume  without  feel- 
ing that  it  impedes  their  creation  of  deco- 
rative beauty.  In  this  style  of  partly  histor- 
ical, partly  symbolic,  art  are  two  notably 
successful  works  by  American  artists,  one 
in  sculpture  and  one  in  painting,  Saint- 
Gaudens's  "Sherman"  and  Blashfield's 
decoration  in  the  Baltimore  Court  House, 
"Washington  Laying  Down  his  Commis- 
sion"   (PL   7).    In   the  "Sherman"   the 

[75] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

contrast  between  the  modern  soldier  and 
the  antique  victory  troubles  some  people 
who  would  have  felt  no  incongruity,  prob- 
ably, if  the  general  had  been  a  warrior  in 
fifteenth-century  armor,  or  had  worn  the 
habit  of  a  Roman  Emperor,  though  in 
either  case  the  mingling  of  fact  and  fiction 
would  have  been  the  same.  So  swiftly  is 
time  foreshortened  as  it  recedes  into  the 
past  that  Washington,  in  blue  and  buff, 
seems  naturally  enough  placed  amid  the 
half-mediaeval,  half-ancient,  costumes  of 
the  symbolical  figures  about  him.  They 
are  all  removed  from  the  present,  which 
is,  for  us,  the  only  real,  and  seem  equally 
to  belong  to  an  ideal  world.  The  effect  of 
the  whole  is  sumptuously  decorative,  while 
the  larger  implications  of  the  story  to  be 
told  are  much  more  clearly  expressed 
than  they  could  be  by  a  realistic  represen- 
tation of  the  scene  that  occurred  at 
Annapolis  in  1783. 

[76] 


Ill 

DESIGN 

Perhaps  the  greatest  weakness  of  mod- 
ern art  is  the  relative  neglect  of  what  is 
ordinarily  called  composition,  or  what  I 
prefer  to  call  by  the  good  old  word  design. 
The  word  composition  means,  of  course, 
the  putting  together  of  the  picture,  and 
seems  to  imply  a  more  or  less  mechanical 
assemblage  of  separately  existing  parts. 
The  word  design  conveys  the  finer  and 
truer  idea  of  an  original  guiding  thought, 
a  principle  of  unity,  out  of  which  the  parts 
and  details  of  a  picture  are  developed  by 
a  natural  and  organic  growth.  You  com- 
pose a  pudding  or  a  black  draught — you 
design  a  work  of  art.  Yet  the  word  com- 
position is  a  convenient  one,  and  one  so 

[77] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

commonly  understood  that  I  shall  use  it 
interchangeably  with  the  word  design. 

Whatever  it  is  to  be  called,  that  the  thing 
itself  is  rather  out  of  fashion  there  can  be 
no  doubt.  Our  tendency  has  been  to  exalt 
the  other  parts  of  the  art  of  painting  at 
the  expense  of  this  fundamental  one  of 
design,  and  to  decry  and  belittle  composi- 
tion as  a  thing  of  small  or  no  importance. 
Indeed,  if  one  may  believe  all  one  hears, 
its  very  existence  has  been  denied;  for  a 
well-known  and  justly  admired  American 
painter  has  been  quoted  as  telling  his 
pupils  that  "There  is  no  such  thing  as 
composition."  If  he  ever  said  so,  one  is  left 
in  doubt  as  to  just  what  he  can  have 
meant.  It  is  possible  that  he  intended  to 
say  that  there  is  no  science  of  composition, 
and  no  valid  rules  for  it — that  design  is, 
and  must  be,  a  matter  of  instinct  and  of 
unconscious  creative  action  on  the  part 
of  the  artist.  In  that  case,  what  is  true  in 
his  statement  is  equally  true  of  drawing 

[78] 


DESIGN 

and  color  and  handling.  In  all  these 
things  the  business  of  the  artist  is  to  create, 
and  to  leave  to  others  the  task  of  finding 
out  the  reasons  for  the  form  of  his  crea- 
tions. It  is  possible,  in  any  art,  to  formu- 
late principles  to  account  for  what  has 
first  been  done — it  is  impossible,  by  the 
application  of  rules  based  on  these  prin- 
ciples, to  create  a  new  and  vital  work. 
This  is  not  a  reason  for  neglecting  the 
study  of  the  masterpieces  of  art,  for 
ignorance  was  never  yet  creative.  It  is 
simply  the  statement,  in  another  form, 
that  the  artist,  however  well  trained,  must 
be  an  artist  born,  and  work  as  the  artist 
has  always  worked. 

It  is  possible,  also,  that  what  was  meant 
to  be  expressed  was  merely  a  personal 
preference  for  informal  and  expressive 
design  over  formal  and  monumental  de- 
sign; for  the  composition  of  the  isolated 
easel  picture  over  the  composition  of  the 
great  mural  painting.  If  so,  it  was  the  ex- 

[79  1 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

pression  of  a  preference  so  common  in  our 
time  as  to  be  nearly  universal;  a  preference 
which  has  caused  us  to  place  on  the  walls 
of  great  public  buildings  pictures  that 
seem  to  defy  rather  than  to  enrich  the 
design  of  the  surrounding  architecture;  a 
preference  which  has  led  to  the  writing 
of  text-books  on  composition  that  include 
in  the  list  of  their  don'ts  nearly  all  the 
things  which  a  study  of  the  great  masters 
would  inculcate  as  things  to  do. 

Whatever  else  was  meant,  it  is  almost 
inconceivable  that  a  literal  denial  of  the 
existence  of  composition,  or  design,  can 
have  been  intended,  for  that  would  have 
been  the  denial  to  the  arts  of  the  one  thing 
they  have  in  common,  of  the  one  great 
fundamental  and  unifying  principle  that 
makes  art  art.  Design  is  arrangement,  is 
order,  is  selection.  Design  is  the  thing  that 
makes  a  work  of  art  a  unit,  that  makes  it 
a  whole  rather  than  a  hap-hazard  collec- 
tion of  unrelated  things  or  a  slice  of  un- 

[80] 


3      B 


_2 
5 


DESIGN 

assimilated  nature.  It  does  not  merely 
concern  itself  with  great  decorative  com- 
positions or  arrangements  of  many  figures 
— it  is  necessarily  present  in  the  simplest 
problems  art  can  set  itself.  Suppose  you 
are  to  paint  a  portrait  head.  There  will  be 
questions  of  drawing,  of  character  and 
expression,  of  light  and  shade  and  color, 
of  the  handling  of  your  material,  to  all  of 
which  you  must  find  answers;  but  before 
you  can  consider  any  of  these  things,  there 
will  be  the  initial  question :  where  are  you 
to  place  the  head  on  your  canvas  ?  How 
far  from  the  top  and  the  bottom,  how  far 
from  the  left  or  right  hand  border?  And 
what  is  the  shape  of  your  canvas  to  be, 
rectangular  or  circular  or  oval,  and  what 
shall  be  the  proportion  of  height  to  width  ? 
This  is  the  fundamental  problem  of  de- 
sign, the  problem  of  the  division  of  space. 
If  you  are  going  to  do  a  little  more  of  the 
figure,  other  problems  will  come  into  play. 
Shall  you  include  the  hands,  and,  if  so, 

[81] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

where  shall  you  place  them  ?  That  is  the 
problem  of  the  balancing  of  dominant  and 
subordinate  masses.  What  is  the  general 
silhouette  of  your  figure,  and  where  shall 
it  cut  the  borders  of  your  canvas?  That 
is  the  problem  of  line.  If  you  do  not  settle 
it  intentionally  and  well  it  will  settle  itself 
accidentally  and,  in  all  probability,  badly. 
The  problems  of  design  are  essentially  the 
same  in  everything  you  do;  they  only  be- 
come more  complicated  as  the  subject  be- 
comes more  complex. 

If  you  are  to  paint  a  still-life  it  is  evident 
that  you  must  arrange  the  objects  some- 
how— they  will  not  come  together  of  them- 
selves. You  might,  conceivably,  begin  a 
portrait  and  wait  for  a  happy  accident — 
a  spontaneous  pose  of  the  sitter — to  give 
you  the  arrangement  of  the  hands:  you 
cannot  wait  for  the  copper  kettle  and  the 
dead  fish  to  place  themselves  agreeably. 
And  still  less  can  nature  or  accident  de- 
termine your  composition  of  a  number  of 

[82] 


DESIGN 

figures,  unless  you  rely  entirely  upon  snap 
shots.  If  you  have  any  intention,  any  story 
to  tell,  any  idea  to  express — if  it  is  no  more 
than  the  idea  of  a  crowd — you  must  ar- 
range your  figures,  well  or  ill.  Even  in 
landscape  painting  of  the  most  naturalistic 
kind,  where  it  is  not  uncommon  to-day  to 
accept  what  nature  gives,  abdicating  the 
right  to  put  in  or  leave  out  and  retaining 
only  that  right  of  choosing  an  agreeable 
view  which  the  photographer  exercises 
equally  with  the  painter — even  there, 
though  you  may  reproduce  a  natural 
landscape  as  literally  as  you  are  able,  you 
must  determine  where  to  cut  it  off.  You 
must  decide  where  to  make  the  division 
between  your  chosen  matter  and  the  rest 
of  nature  which  you  reject,  you  must  think 
whether  your  material  will  go  best  onto 
an  upright  canvas  or  an  oblong  one,  and 
what  are  to  be  its  proportions  and  dimen- 
sions. In  that  act  you  are  exercising  the 
art  of  design.  You  cannot  escape  from  de- 

[83] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

sign;  you  cannot  avoid  composing.  You 
may  compose  badly  but  compose  you 
must. 

And  if  the  demands  of  design  are  funda- 
mental they  are  also  universal.  It  is  not 
only  your  lines  and  masses  that  must  be 
composed,  but  your  light  and  shade,  your 
color,  your  very  brushmarks  must  be  ar- 
ranged ;  and  the  task  of  composition  is  not 
done  until  the  last  touch  has  been  placed 
upon  the  canvas,  although,  for  the  sake  of 
convenience,  the  term  composition,  or  de- 
sign, is  generally  limited  to  the  arrange- 
ment of  lines  and  masses,  the  arrangement 
of  the  other  elements  of  the  picture  being 
considered  separately. 

As  design  is  the  underlying  and  unifying 
principle  of  every  work  of  art,  so  it  is  the 
classic  principle,  par  excellence,  the  prin- 
ciple which  makes  for  order  and  stability 
and  clarity  and  all  that  the  classic  spirit 
holds  most  dear.  It  is  conservative  in  its 
nature,   and   tends   to   preserve  the   old 

[84] 


DESIGN 

molds  even  when  new  matter  is  put  into 
them.  It  holds  on  to  tradition  and  keeps 
up  the  connection  with  the  past.  It 
changes,  but  it  changes  more  slowly  than 
almost  any  other  element  of  art.  Great 
and  original  power  of  design  is  more  rare 
than  any  other  of  the  powers  of  an  artist 
and  a  radically  new  form  of  design  is  very 
nearly  inconceivable.  Artists  will  make 
a  thousand  new  observations  of  nature 
and  almost  entirely  alter  the  contents  of  a 
work  of  art  before  they  make  any  but 
slight  changes  in  the  pattern  in  which  it  is 
cast;  and  in  all  the  history  of  painting  the 
men  are  but  a  handful  who  have  made  any 
material  addition  to  the  resources  of  the 
designer.  If  in  our  own  day  we  seem  to 
have  cut  loose  from  tradition  and  to  have 
lost  our  connection  with  the  great  design 
of  the  past  it  is  not  because  we  have  sud- 
denly acquired  a  surprising  degree  of  de- 
signing power  and  are  inventing  a  new 
and  modern  art  of  composition,  but  be- 

[85  1 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

cause  most  of  us  have  forgotten  altogether 
how  to  compose  and  are  trying  to  get  on 
without  any  design  at  all ;  the  result  being 
bad  design  and  mere  chaos.  Wherever,  in 
modern  art  as  in  the  art  of  the  past,  you 
find  an  artist  of  real  power  of  design — and 
we  have  had  such — you  find  the  note  of 
classicism,  of  respect  for  tradition,  of  con- 
nection with  everything  fine  and  noble 
that  has  gone  before. 

This  conservatism  of  design  follows 
naturally  from  the  fact  that  it  is  not  imita- 
tive of  nature,  and  is  therefore  unaffected 
by  the  investigation  of  natural  appear- 
ances. It  is,  of  course,  founded  on  natural 
laws — on  the  laws  of  sight  and  on  the  laws 
of  the  human  mind — but  it  is  only  acciden- 
tally and  occasionally  that  it  is  directly  in- 
fluenced by  anything  outside  itself.  The 
naturalistic  temper  will,  as  it  has  done  at 
various  times,  lead  to  the  neglect  of  com- 
position :  it  will  not  lead  to  new  discoveries 
in   composition.  The  study  of  anatomy 

[86] 


DESIGN 

revolutionized  and  greatly  enriched  the 
drawing  of  the  human  figure;  the  study 
of  natural  light  and  color  has  added  some- 
thing to  the  resources  of  the  painter,  if  it 
has  also  subtracted  something  from  them ; 
the  only  study  that  has  ever  greatly  helped 
the  designer  is  the  study  of  design  as  it  has 
been  practised  before  him.  To  look  long 
at  the  great  compositions  of  the  master 
designers  of  the  world;  to  try  to  find  in 
them,  not  hard  and  fast  rules  of  what  to 
do  and  what  to  avoid,  but  the  guiding 
principles  on  which  they  are  built;  to 
steep  one's  self  in  tradition ;  and  then  to  set 
one's  self  to  invent  new  forms  which  shall 
be  guided  by  the  principles  and  contained 
within  the  boundaries  of  the  old — that  is 
the  only  way  to  study  design.  It  is  pre- 
cisely because  design  must  be  studied  in 
this  way,  because  it  makes  for  tradition 
and  continuity  and  leads  away  from  a  too 
exclusive  study  of  nature,  that,  from  the 
classic  point  of  view,  for  which  I  speak, 

[87] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

the  study  of  design  is  the  most  salutary 
discipline  possible  in  this  too  naturalistic 
age.  If  I  could  have  my  way  in  the  train- 
ing of  young  artists  I  should  insist  upon 
their  spending  a  good  deal  of  time  in  the 
study  and  designing  of  pure  ornament, 
not  that  they  might  learn  the  "historic 
styles" — though  that,  too,  would  have  its 
advantages — but  that  they  might  learn 
how  independent  fine  design  is  of  its  con- 
tent and  how  slight  may  be  the  connec- 
tion between  art  and  nature. 

In  all  design  concerned  with  the  beauti- 
fying of  surfaces,  as  painting  is,  from  the 
simplest  treatment  of  ornament  to  the 
most  complicated  of  naturalistic  pictures, 
the  ends  to  be  sought  and  the  means  of 
attaining  these  ends  are  the  same.  First, 
there  is  the  division  of  the  whole  space  to 
be  treated  into  a  number  of  smaller  spaces, 
or  masses,  which  shall  be  agreeable  in 
their  relation  to  each  other  and  of  inter- 
esting and  beautiful  shapes.  Some  of  these 

[88] 


DESIGN 

spaces  will  be  filled  with  minor  divisions 
and  enriched  with  details,  while  others 
will  be  left  comparatively  simple,  like  the 
background  of  ornament,  and  we  have 
thus  that  balance  of  filled  and  empty 
spaces  which  is  one  of  the  great  beauties 
of  fine  design.  Some  one  of  the  masses  will, 
by  size,  by  position,  or  by  isolation,  some- 
times by  all  three  means,  be  made  more 
important  than  the  others,  and  this  prin- 
ciple of  subordination  will  be  carried 
throughout  the  design,  each  mass  which 
is  subordinate  to  the  principal  one  having 
other  attendant  masses  subordinated  to  it. 
After  the  division  of  space  comes  the 
unification  by  line.  The  whole  composi- 
tion will  be  bound  together  by  a  series  of 
lines,  either  the  edges  of  the  masses  or 
interior  lines  within  them,  and  these  lines 
will  not  only  be  agreeable  in  themselves 
but  will  be  so  arranged  as  to  lead  the  eye 
easily  and  without  jar  or  fatigue,  from 
one  mass  to  another,  bringing  it  finally  to 

[89] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

rest  on  the  dominant  mass  of  the  com- 
position. And  these  lines  will  have  char- 
acters of  their  own,  entirely  apart  from 
anything  they  may  represent.  Horizontal 
lines  will  suggest  repose,  vertical  lines  will 
suggest  rigidity  and  stability,  curved  lines 
will  convey  the  idea  of  motion;  and  the 
curves  will  differ  among  themselves,  some 
being  soft  and  voluptuous,  others  resilient 
and  tonic. 

In  the  use  of  these  primary  elements  of 
composition  a  number  of  subsidiary  prin- 
ciples will  come  into  play:  The  principle 
of  balance,  either  of  like  subordinate 
masses  either  side  a  central  dominant, 
which  is  symmetrical  and  monumental 
composition,  or  of  unlike  masses  at  dif- 
ferent distances  from  an  ideal  centre, 
which  is  free  or  pictorial  composition, 
though  the  Japanese  use  it  in  ornament: 
the  principle  of  repetition,  the  extreme 
form  of  which  is  the  continuous  frieze  or 
border,  but  which  is  constantly  used  in 

[90  1 


DESIGN 

pictures:  the  principle  of  contrast,  the 
straight  line  making  the  curve  seem  more 
graceful,  the  curve  making  the  straight 
line  seem  more  uncompromising  and  more 
rigid. 
The  structure  of  the  design  being  thus 
formed  it  will  be  enriched  and  re-enforced 
by  the  use  of  light  and  dark  and  by  the 
use  of  color.  In  a  simple  panel  of  orna- 
ment, for  instance,  the  filled  spaces,  that 
is  the  ornament  itself,  will  be  either  dark- 
er or  lighter  than  the  ground  or  empty 
spaces;  or  they  will  be  of  a  different  col- 
or from  the  empty  spaces,  without  any 
greatly  marked  difference  of  value.  Or 
the  filled  spaces  may  be  both  lighter  and 
darker  than  the  ground,  as  they  would  be 
in  sculpture  in  relief.  The  dominance  of 
the  most  important  mass  may  be  increased 
by  making  it  the  lightest  or  the  darkest 
or  the  most  powerfully  colored  mass,  or 
by  giving  it  the  sharpest  contrast  of  light 
and  dark;  and  however  this  is  done  cer- 

[91] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

tain  of  the  subsidiary  masses  will  be  given 
a  secondary  importance  by  a  less  marked 
use  of  the  same  means. 
So  far  the  process  is  identical,  whether 
the  content  of  the  design  is  pure  orna- 
ment or  a  great  figure  painting,  but  as 
we  approach  the  free  design  of  the  easel 
picture  a  new  element  comes  into  play. 
Ornamental  design  is  design  in  two  di- 
mensions only,  and  decorative  painting 
always  tends  to  retain,  or  to  return  to,  two 
dimensional  composition.  But  in  propor- 
tion as  painting  becomes  desirous  and 
able  to  convey  the  illusion  of  space  it 
begins  to  compose  in  the  third  dimension 
also.  The  things  it  represents  have  not 
only  an  elevation  but  a  ground  plan,  and 
the  ground  plan  must  be  as  thoroughly 
designed  as  the  elevation.  The  distances 
of  one  mass  from  another  in  the  direction 
of  the  depth  of  the  picture  must  be  as 
carefully  proportioned  as  the  vertical  and 
lateral  distances,  and  the  lines  traced  up- 

[92] 


DESIGN 

on  the  ideal  ground  plan  must  be  as 
beautiful  as  those  visible  upon  the  vertical 
surface. 
These  are,  as  well  as  I  can  explain  them 
in  brief  compass,  the  immutable  principles 
of  design:  few  in  number,  but  admitting 
of  so  much  variety  in  their  application 
that  all  the  great  compositions  that  have 
ever  been  made  have  not  begun  to  ex- 
haust the  possible  combinations — there 
is  room  for  an  infinite  number  of  fine 
compositions,  still.  The  extent  to  which 
these  principles  govern  the  work  of  the 
great  designers  is  almost  incredible  until 
one  has  convinced  one's  self  of  it  by  pro- 
longed study.  Their  scope  is  co-extensive 
with  the  work,  and  in  the  masterpieces  of 
design  'there  is  absolutely  no  room  for 
accident.  Every  smallest  detail,  each  fold 
of  drapery,  each  leaf  in  each  smallest 
spray  of  leafage,  is  where  it  must  be,  and 
is  of  its  proper  form  and  inevitable  size  to 
play  its  part  in  the  symphony  of  design. 

[93] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

It  could  no  more  be  somewhere  else  or  of 
some  other  shape  than  a  note  could  be 
of  another  pitch  in  a  musical  composition. 
Any  change  in  it  would  change  the  char- 
acter of  the  whole.  Designs  of  this  perfec- 
tion are  rare,  of  course,  but  they  exist; 
and  in  some  of  the  compositions  of  Raph- 
ael and  Veronese  you  could  not  change 
so  much  as  a  tendril  of  hair  or  a  ring  on  a 
finger  without  loss. 

The  design  of  early  and  primitive  artists 
is,  naturally  enough,  extremely  simple 
and  formal.  From  Giotto  to  Raphael  there 
is  only  a  very  gradual  enrichment  of  a 
manner  of  composition  which  remains 
essentially  the  same.  The  pictures  of  this 
time  are  almost  exclusively  of  two  types: 
the  narrative  composition,  devoted  to  the 
telling  of  Gospel  stories  or  to  the  lives  of 
the  Saints ;  and  the  devotional  composition 
or  altar-piece. 

The  narrative  composition,  in  early 
work,  tends  to  the  condition  of  the  frieze 

[94] 


DESIGN 

or  bas-relief.  The  figures  are  apt  to  be  in 
profile  and  are  nearly  always  in  one  plane, 
and  they  are  rather  isolated  without  much 
connection  into  groups.  With  all  its  sim- 
plicity this  form  of  design  is  capable  of 
great  expressiveness,  and,  from  its  very 
limitations,  is  admirably  fitted  for  archi- 
tectural decoration.  It  was  perhaps,  in- 
voluntarily that  the  work  of  Giotto  was 
so  unfailingly  decorative,  for  the  simplic- 
ity of  division  and  the  composition  on  one 
plane  were  inevitable  at  the  stage  of 
development  which  the  art  of  painting  had 
then  reached.  But  the  dignity  and  the 
inventiveness,  within  the  limits  of  what 
was  then  possible,  are  the  master's  own. 
There  have  been  more  complete  painters 
than  Giotto,  because  there  have  been  great 
men  who  came  at  periods  of  fuller  ripeness 
in  their  art ;  but  there  have  been  few  artists 
of  greater  essential  power  as  designers. 
Again  and  again  he  found  the  best  ar- 
rangement for  the  telling  of  his  story,  and 

[95] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

settled  the  lines  on  which  his  successors 
were  willing  to  work  for  a  century  or 
two.  Such  a  composition  as  his  "Death  of 
St.  Francis"  (PL  8)  remains  to  this  day 
as  simple  and  noble  in  its  great  lines 
and  masses  as  anything  that  has  been 
done  and  it  would  be  hard  to  better  it 
except  in  detail,  or  even  to  better  its  de- 
tails without  losing  something  of  its 
majesty. 

The  devotional  picture,  the  purpose  of 
which  was  not  to  tell  a  story  but  merely  to 
present  objects  for  worship,  descends  from 
the  Byzantine  ancona,  and  was,  at  first, 
made  up  of  a  number  of  separate  panels, 
framed  together  into  a  great  altar-piece. 
There  would  be  a  Madonna  and  Child  in 
the  middle  panel,  probably  on  a  larger 
scale  than  the  other  figures,  and  rows  of 
saints  on  either  side,  each  in  its  own 
niche.  The  first  step  in  advance  amounted 
to  little  more  than  removing  the  interior 
divisions,  leaving  the  figures  much  as  they 

[96] 


Plate  13. — "Pallas  Driving  away  Mars,"  by  Tintoretto. 

In  the  Ducal  Palace,  Venice. 


DESIGN 


were,  even  to  the  greater  size  of  the  cen- 
tral figure.  Except  for  the  elimination  of 
this  discrepancy  in  size  there  was  little 
further  development  of  this  form  of  com- 
position until  Raphael  took  hold  of  it,  but 
its  essentially  architectural  character  was 
appreciated,  and  it  was  applied  to  other 
than  religious  subjects.  It  became,  espe- 
cially, and  has  remained  to  this  day,  the 
natural  form  of  composition  for  the  lu- 
nette, or  semicircular  space,  with  its  great- 
est height  in  the  middle,  where  the  central 
figure  would  come.  But,  in  altar-pieces  or 
decorative  allegories,  you  may  yet  see,  in 
the  work  of  Perugino  (PL  9),  how  the  sub- 
sidiary figures  stand  in  a  row,  each  almost 
as  much  alone  as  if  it  still  had  its  own 
frame  around  it.  Meantime  the  narrative 
composition  had  become  richer  and  more 
complex,  and  the  two  forms  met  in  Leo- 
nardo's "Last  Supper"  (PL  10),  half  nar- 
rative, half  devotional,  where  the  apostles, 
instead  of  sitting  more  or  less  equidistant 

[97] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

from  each  other,  are  played  about  into 
groups  of  three  and  bound  together  with 
interlacing  lines  of  arms  and  draperies.  It 
is  the  first  complete  and  fully  perfected 
instance  of  formal  design  in  modern 
art. 
Then  came  Raphael,  the  greatest  master 
of  formal  design  that  the  world  has  seen, 
and  gave  us  the  still  unequalled  models 
of  decorative  composition.  His  fecundity 
and  variety  are  astonishing.  In  one  room, 
the  Stanza  della  Segnatura  in  the  Vatican, 
he  has  given  us  the  perfect  examples  of 
composition  for  the  circular  medallion, 
the  rectangular  panel,  the  semicircular 
lunette,  the  segmental  lunette,  and  the 
pierced  lunette,  or  lunette  with  an  opening 
cut  through  it;  and  in  the  second  of  these 
chambers  of  the  Vatican  are  two  other 
pierced  lunettes,  entirely  different  and 
equally  admirable,  the  "Mass  of  Bolsena" 
and  the  "Deliverance  of  Peter."  Besides 
these  he  has  shown  us,  in  Santa  Maria 

[98] 


DESIGN 

della  Pace,  how  to  design  a  frieze  inter- 
rupted by  a  central  arch  and,  in  the 
Farnesina,  how  to  design  a  series  of  tri- 
angular pendentives;  while  a  multitude 
of  Madonnas  and  other  pictures  of  smaller 
size  are,  almost  invariably,  masterpieces 
of  composition.  Yet  he  has  introduced  few 
absolute  novelties,  the  chief  of  these  being 
a  strictly  limited  use  of  the  third  dimen- 
sion. He  still  composes  laterally  instead  of 
composing  in  depth,  but,  in  the  "Dis- 
puta"  (PL  11),  he  has  for  the  first  time 
thrown  the  centre  of  his  composition  back 
and  advanced  the  sides,  achieving  an  effect 
as  if  the  lunette  had  become  a  great  semi- 
dome  or  apse.  It  is  as  architectural  as 
composition  in  the  flat,  but  while  it  defi- 
nitely limits  it  also  enlarges  the  apparent 
space  and  gives  one  breathing-room  and 
a  consequent  sense  of  ease  and  enhanced 
well-being.  Further  than  this  it  is  danger- 
ous for  purely  decorative  design  to  go, 
and  composition  in  depth  rarely  has  gone 

[99] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

much  further  in  the  hands  of  true  deco- 
rators. 

This  whole  composition,  the  earliest 
and  the  most  formal  of  Raphael's  great 
frescoes  in  the  Vatican,  is  perhaps  the 
most  perfect  of  any  for  its  decorative  and 
symbolic  purpose,  and  it  is  worth  a  little 
study  to  see  how  he  has  designed  it  much 
in  the  same  way  that  a  designer  of  orna- 
ment might  fill  the  same  space.  The  most 
important  object  in  the  picture,  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  story  he  had  to  tell, 
is  the  Host  upon  the  altar,  for  the  real 
presence  in  the  celebration  of  the  Mass  is 
the  central  doctrine  of  Catholic  theology. 
It  is  a  small  object  and  cannot  be  given 
predominance  by  size — it  must  attain  it 
by  position  and  by  isolation.  He  places  its 
little  circle  in  the  midst  of  a  broad  band 
of  empty  space,  the  only  one,  which  ex- 
tends from  one  end  of  the  design  to  the 
other,  and  just  at  the  level  of  the  spring 
of  the  arch,  so  that  the  whole  composition 
[100] 


DESIGN 

radiates  from  it  as  from  a  centre.  Below 
it  is  the  church  on  earth,  above  it  the 
heavenly  host — it  dominates  earth  and 
heaven.  Immediately  above  is  the  figure 
of  Christ,  in  a  great  circular  glory,  with 
the  Virgin  and  John  Baptist  on  His  right 
and  left  hands  and  the  first  and  third  Per- 
sons of  the  Trinity  above  and  below  Him 
— a  compact  group  of  great  size  and  im- 
portance, yet  a  less  important  centre  than 
the  Host  because  less  isolated.  From  this 
group  sweeps  to  right  and  left  the  great 
semicircle  of  Apostles  and  Prophets, 
seated  upon  the  level  clouds,  and  this 
semicircle  is  repeated,  higher  up,  by  that 
of  the  Angels.  Below  are  Popes,  Bishops, 
Cardinals,  poets,  Fathers  of  the  Church, 
disposed  in  two  great,  wedge-shaped 
masses,  narrowing  toward  the  central  rect- 
angle of  the  altar;  and  the  presence  of  a 
door  at  one  end  of  the  wall  has  led  to  the 
introduction  of  balustrades  at  either  cor- 
ner which   happily  echo  this   rectangle, 

[101] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

making  it  the  apex  of  a  triangle  in  the 
ground  plan,  while  the  long,  horizontal 
lines  of  the  steps  and  pavement  give  sta- 
bility and  repose  to  the  whole  design. 

So  far,  it  is  all  formality  and  geometrical 
planning;  but  now  the  element  of  variety 
enters.  It  is  very  slight  in  the  upper  por- 
tion of  the  composition,  only  the  leaning 
sidewise  of  St.  Stephen  breaking  the  uni- 
formity of  the  rank  of  Saints;  but  it  is 
almost  infinite  below — figures  standing, 
sitting,  kneeling,  leaning,  gathering  into 
clumps  and  scattering  again,  their  heads 
forming  an  intricate  and  ingenious  sky- 
line, yet  always  controlled  by  some  hid- 
den principle  of  unity,  line  balancing  line 
and  mass  answering  to  mass  by  subtle  and 
hardly  discoverable  conformities.  Each 
group — each  single  figure  almost — is  as 
wonderful  in  its  design  as  the  great  whole 
of  which  it  forms  a  part.  I  could  point  out 
some  of  these  minor  felicities  of  arrange- 
ment, but  it  would  take  too  long,  and  the 

[102] 


DESIGN 

student  will  get  more  out  of  the  effort  to 
find  them  for  himself.  And,  long  as  I  have 
studied  the  picture,  I  by  no  means  under- 
stand it  all,  nor  do  I  hope  ever  to  do  so.  I 
only  know  that  it  is  supremely  right  and 
perfect,  altogether  and  forever  satisfying. 
I  shall  not  attempt  to  analyze  any  other 
composition  in  such  detail  as  this.  My 
object  is  to  show  what  design  is,  in  one 
great  example,  and  to  set  you  to  looking 
for  it  in  other  works  of  art.  And  you  will 
find  it  in  places  where  at  first  you  would 
not  think  of  looking  for  it.  The  splendor 
of  Venetian  color  and  the  richness  of 
Venetian  light  and  shade  have  so  blinded 
us  to  the  presence  of  anything  else  in  the 
works  of  Titian  and  Tintoretto  that  it  is 
only  after  special  study  that  one  realizes 
their  power  of  design.  But  if  you  will  look 
over  any  of  the  old-fashioned  histories  of 
art  which  are  illustrated  with  cuts  in  little 
more  than  outline,  and  bad  outline  at  that, 
you  will  find  that,  after  color  and  light  and 

[103] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

shade  have  been  eliminated,  and  drawing 
denatured,  there  remains  an  indestructible 
element  in  the  work  of  these  men  which  an- 
nounces, at  the  first  glance,  the  presence  of 
a  master.  That  element  is,  and  can  be, 
nothing  but  design.  It  is  more  usually  the 
free  design  suited  to  easel-painting — a  form 
of  art  practically  invented  by  Giorgione — 
but  is  none  the  less  masterly  and  complete 
on  that  account.  Take,  for  example, 
Titian's  "Entombment"  (PL  12)  and  see 
how  the  lines  of  the  figures  encompass  the 
dead  Christ;  how  every  arm  and  hand  and 
fold  of  drapery  is  played  into  a  series  of 
curves  that  sympathize  with  and  accent- 
uate the  helpless  droop  of  that  dead  body ; 
how  absolute  and  inevitable  is  the  spacing 
within  the  frame;  how  impossible  it  would 
be  to  alter  the  smallest  detail  without  de- 
stroying the  harmony  of  the  whole.  Or 
take  Tintoretto  at  his  best,  in  the  wonder- 
ful "Pallas  Driving  away  Mars"  (PL  13) 
and  see  how  everything  in  the  picture  re- 

[104] 


DESIGN 

inforces  and  lends  added  strength  to  the 
push  of  the  goddess's  arm.  And  for  an 
exquisite  bit  of  contrast,  see  how  the  stiff 
straightness  of  Pallas's  lance  relieves  and 
yet  enhances  the  luxuriance  of  the  curves, 
noting,  at  the  same  time,  how  the  different 
angles  of  the  two  lances,  as  if  sprung  from 
a  common  centre  like  the  spokes  of  a 
wheel,  set  everything  swinging  over  to  the 
right  and  send  Mars  tottering  out  of  the 
picture  faster,  even,  than  his  own  attitude 
would  carry  him.  This  is  design,  and  de- 
sign of  the  best.  As  for  Veronese,  who 
added  to  all  the  other  Venetian  qualities 
a  gayety  of  feeling  and  a  brilliancy  of 
workmanship  which  tend  still  more  to 
disguise  the  underlying  structure,  he  is, 
whether  for  formal  and  monumental  or 
for  free  and  fantastic  composition,  second 
only  to  Raphael,  if  he  is  second  to  any  one. 
He  is  a  decorator  born,  and  the  decorator, 
whatever  his  other  gifts,  is  always  pre- 
eminently and  fundamentally  a  designer. 

[105] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

Since  the  time  of  these  great  sixteenth 
century  masters  there  has  been  no  new 
discovery  in  design.  Its  principles  have 
been  differently  applied  and  have  been 
applied  to  various  purposes,  but  there  has 
been  no  addition  to  the  resources  of  the 
designer.  Rubens,  with  all  his  giant-like 
strength  and  almost  appalling  abundance 
and  fecundity,  was  by  essential  temper 
a  classicist  and  a  lover  of  tradition;  only 
his  was  a  classicism  modified  by  and 
appropriate  to  his  age,  an  age  of  the 
Baroque  in  architecture  and  of  luxurious- 
ness  in  life.  In  every  part  of  his  art  he 
founded  his  practice  upon  that  of  his 
predecessors,  and  his  composition  is  the 
composition  of  the  great  Venetians  rend- 
ered a  little  looser,  a  little  more  florid.  The 
straight  line  is  almost  entirely  banished, 
the  curved  lines  are  more  redundant  and 
less  severe,  and  have  a  strong  tendency 
to  the  double,  or  S-shaped,  curve,  while 
the  whole  pattern  is  more  irregular  and 

[106] 


DESIGN 

picturesque.  None  the  less  is  it  a  pattern, 
complete  and  self-contained,  as  inevitable 
in  the  logical  connection  of  the  parts  with 
the  main  idea  of  the  whole  as  one  of  Ra- 
phael's. Such  grasp  of  composition  as 
forces  every  limb  of  every  one  of  the 
myriad  figures  in  the  small  "Last  Judg- 
ment" into  its  predestined  place  in  the 
huge,  if  sprawling  design — for  the  design 
is  huge  though  the  canvas  is  small — is 
almost  disconcerting. 

During  the  same  years  in  which  Ru- 
bens was  producing  his  Baroque  classi- 
cism a  classicist  of  a  very  different  sort  was 
at  work  in  Rome.  For  Poussin,  a  man  of 
cold  temper  and  powerful  intellect,  the 
colorists  did  not  exist.  He  founded  his 
style  on  Raphael  and,  above  all,  on  the 
study  of  the  antique,  and  his  composition 
is  severe  almost  to  baldness,  but  grandly 
expressive.  Being  more  in  harmony  with 
his  age,  Rubens  was  immensely  the  more 
influential  of  the  two.  His  composition, 

[107] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

with  slight  modifications,  becomes  the 
composition  of  the  whole  of  the  seven- 
teenth and  eighteenth  centuries,  while  in 
such  splendid  pieces  of  bravura  as  the 
"Rape  of  the  Daughters  of  Leucippus" 
(PL  14)  or  the  Medici  series  in  The 
Louvre,  we  have  the  model  of  almost 
everything  that  Delacroix  produced.  Ru- 
bens is  the  fountainhead  of  modern  art — 
Poussin  has  had  few  disciples.  The  great- 
est of  these  is  Jean  Francois  Millet,  whose 
description  of  his  favorite  master's  "Tes- 
tament of  Eudamitas"  you  have  already 
heard. 

Of  Millet's  own  design,  as  austere  as 
Poussin's  and  as  expressive,  no  better  ex- 
ample could  be  given  than  "The  Glean- 
ers "  (PI.  15).  It  is  design  reduced  to  the 
barely  necessary,  purged  of  all  luxury  or 
superfluity,  the  naked  expression  of  one 
idea  and  no  more.  The  field  is  divided 
into  two  broad  bands  by  the  horizon  line, 
at  about  two-thirds  of  the  height  of  the 

[108] 


DESIGN 

canvas,  and  the  long  sky  line  is  broken 
only  at  the  left  by  the  simple  mass  of  the 
wagon  and  the  straw-stacks.  Wholly 
within  the  lower  division  are  the  three  fig- 
ures, two  of  them  forming  a  compact 
group,  the  third  a  little  apart  yet  so  near 
that  a  single  sweeping  curve  would  unite 
the  three.  The  two  are  bent  double  to 
reach  the  ground,  and  their  lines  repeat 
each  other  almost  exactly.  The  third  is 
standing,  but  so  stooped  that  the  line  of 
her  body  recalls  and  sympathizes  with  the 
stronger  lines  of  the  other  two.  That  is  all; 
but  these  few  elements  are  placed  with 
such  perfect  sense  of  weight  and  balance, 
the  relations  of  the  large  and  simple  spaces 
to  each  other  and  to  the  enclosing  bor- 
der are  so  admirably  right;  the  bounding 
and  connecting  lines  are  so  noble  and  so 
expressive  that  nothing  more  could  be 
asked  for.  Different  as  he  was  from  Millet 
in  every  fibre  of  his  artistic  nature,  it  is 
by  much  such  simple  divisions  of  space 

[109] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

and  such  economy  of  line  that  Whistler 
produces  his  finest  effects.  The  design  of 
both  men  is  at  the  antipodes  of  the  over- 
flowing abundance  and  richness  of  that  of 
Rubens;  yet  the  severe  and  the  luxurious 
are  equally  legitimate  forms  of  design. 
Which  one  will  prefer  is  a  matter  of  tem- 
perament and  of  occasion — of  what  one 
has  to  do  and  of  what  one  likes  doing. 
The  great  masters  of  design  in  portrai- 
ture, among  the  old  masters,  are  Raphael, 
who  was  as  wonderful  as  a  portrait  painter 
as  he  was  as  a  decorator,  and  Holbein. 
Holbein  also,  as  we  know  from  a  few 
paintings  and  many  woodcuts,  was  a  great 
figure  designer,  but,  in  his  strongest  years, 
he  was  permitted  to  produce  little  but  por- 
traits. These  portraits,  even  the  slightest 
drawings,  are  unfailingly  perfect  in  de- 
sign. The  head  is  always  in  just  the  right 
spot  on  the  canvas,  the  hands  are  at  just 
the  right  distance  from  the  head,  the 
division  of  space  between  the  figure  and 
[no] 


DESIGN 

the  background  is  always  agreeable,  the 
bounding  line  of  the  figure  is  always  beau- 
tiful and  always  cuts  the  edge  of  the  pict- 
ure in  the  right  place  and  at  the  right 
angle.  Some  of  them  are  much  more 
elaborate  than  others;  but  take  one  of 
the  simplest  of  them,  the  incomparable 
"Erasmus"  (PL  16)  of  the  Louvre,  and 
you  will  find  it  as  admirable  and  perfect 
as  a  design  as  it  is  as  a  rendering  of  char- 
acter— I  do  not  know  how  to  praise  it 
more  highly  than  that. 

But  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury saw  a  master  of  design  as  great  as 
any  that  ever  lived,  and  I  do  not  know 
but  that  some  of  the  portraits  of  Ingres  are 
the  most  complete  and  perfect  examples 
of  design  as  applied  to  portraiture  in  the 
whole  range  of  art.  For  a  design  appropri- 
ate to  and  almost  miraculously  expressive 
of  character  and  bodily  habit  it  would  be 
difficult  to  find  anything  approaching  the 
"M.  Bertin";  while  for  a  design  beautiful 
[in] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

in  its  own  right,  rich,  elaborate,  gracious, 
yet  with  a  lofty  and  serene  austerity  in  its 
pure  beauty,  I  know  not  where  to  find  a 
parallel  for  the  exquisite  portrait  of  Mme. 
Riviere  (PL  17)  short  of  those  Greek  gems 
of  which  its  oval  form,  no  less  than  its 
artistic  quality,  reminds  us. 

I  spoke,  awhile  ago,  of  design  as  pre- 
eminently the  conservative  and  classic 
element  in  art.  In  no  branch  of  art  is  this 
more  true  than  in  the  painting  of  land- 
scape. Landscape  painting  is  a  compara- 
tively modern  form  of  art,  and  modern  dis- 
coveries concerning  light  and  atmosphere 
have  so  transformed  our  view  of  nature 
that,  were  it  not  for  this  element  of  design, 
which  has  no  naturalistic  origin,  modern 
landscape  painting  would  have  been  in 
danger  of  losing  all  touch  with  the  past 
and  thereby  losing,  also,  that  power  of 
evoking  memories  of  former  pleasures 
which  is  one  of  the  great  pleasure-giving 
resources  of  all  art.  Fortunately  the  first 
[112] 


Plate  14. — "The  Daughters  of  Leucippus,"  by  Rubens. 

In  the  old  Pinakothek  at  Munich. 


DESIGN 

great  innovators  in  modern  landscape 
were  lovers  of  the  past,  and  master  de- 
signers. The  detailed  study  of  natural 
forms,  the  mystery  of  atmospheric  effect, 
the  glow  of  color  or  the  delicate  rendering 
of  gradations  of  light  were,  with  Rousseau 
and  Corot,  but  the  clothing  of  a  pattern 
which  was  traditional  and  classic.  It  is  this 
persistence  of  pattern  which  gives  their 
work  its  air  of  permanence  and  finality — 
which  makes  it  a  part  of  the  art  of  the 
world  and  of  all  time.  With  Corot  (PL  18), 
especially,  the  classic  feeling  was  so  strong 
that  his  pictures  give  you  echoes  of  every- 
thing noble  and  lovely  that  has  been  done, 
of  Titian  and  Giorgione,  fathers  of  land- 
scape painting,  no  less  than  of  the  severe 
grandeur  of  Poussin  and  the  clear  grace 
of  Claude. 

And  it  is  this  conservative,  and  pre- 
servative, element  of  design  that  will  save 
such  of  the  work  of  the  successors  of  Corot 
and  Rousseau   as  the   world  shall  per- 

[113] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

manently  enjoy.  Monet  and  his  friends 
have  undoubtedly  made  some  discoveries 
about  natural  light  and  the  means  of  rep- 
resenting it  in  painting — discoveries  not 
so  new  perhaps,  or  so  important  as  they 
thought  them,  but  still  discoveries — and 
in  so  far  as  they  have  done  this,  they  have 
been  of  use  to  those  that  shall  come  after 
them,  as  the  naturalists  of  the  fifteenth 
century,  with  their  studies  of  anatomy  and 
perspective,  were  serviceable  to  their  suc- 
cessors; but  in  so  far  as  they  have  neg- 
lected design  they  have  forgotten  to  be 
artists  and  contented  themselves  with  be- 
ing investigators.  For  without  design  there 
may  be  representation,  but  there  can  be 
no  art. 

This  tendency  to  a  comparative  neglect 
of  design,  to  allowing  representation  to 
become  an  end  instead  of  a  means,  to 
making  what  should  be  an  embroidery 
of  light  and  color  take  the  place  of  the 
structure   that  should  underlie  the  em- 

[114] 


DESIGN 

broidery — a  tendency  which  is  the  com- 
mon temptation  of  the  modern  painter — 
is  particularly  insidious  and  dangerous  to 
the  painter  of  landscape.  He  finds  the 
rendering  of  natural  effect  so  difficult 
and  so  absorbing  that  he  can  think  of 
nothing  else,  and  nature  is  so  beautiful 
that  she  usurps,  for  him,  the  place  of  art. 
He  is  apt  to  be,  in  the  first  place,  one  to 
whom  light  and  color  mean  more  than 
line  and  mass,  or  he  would  have  chosen 
figure  painting  as  his  vocation,  and  he  has 
not  the  figure  painter's  dominating  neces- 
sity to  compose  somehow,  well  or  ill.  As 
most  of  his  work,  nowadays,  is  done  in 
the  open  air,  he  must  paint  rapidly  while 
the  effect  lasts,  and  has  no  time  for  pon- 
deration  and  delicate  balancing  of  mass 
against  mass  and  line  against  line.  He 
habituates  himself  to  taking  snap-shots 
at  things  as  they  fly,  satisfied  if  he  can 
capture  any  reflection  of  the  beauty  of 
the  scene  before  him,  and  contents  himself 

[115] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

with  so  much  thought  of  composition  as 
goes  to  the  determination  of  what  frag- 
ment of  nature  he  may  include  within  his 
frame. 
The  more  to  be  admired  are  those  paint- 
ers whose  native  sense  of  design  is  so 
powerful  as  to  give  distinction  and  a  clas- 
sic grace  even  to  their  sketches  from 
nature.  One  such,  who  has  almost  ceased 
to  paint  without  ceasing  to  be  an  artist,  is 
Charles  A.  Piatt.  First  an  etcher,  then  a 
painter  of  distinction,  a  member  of  the 
Society  of  American  Artists,  and  now  of 
the  National  Academy  of  Design,  and  a 
winner  of  the  Webb  Prize,  he  has  pro- 
duced a  series  of  landscapes  which,  for 
elegance  of  line,  dignity  of  spacing  and 
beauty  of  arrangement  are  unique  in  our 
art.  Some  day,  his  pictures  will  be  appre- 
ciated at  their  worth.  Meanwhile,  he  has 
had  to  turn  to  another  form  of  art  and,  as 
was  the  case  with  the  great  artists  of  the 
Renaissance,  the  same  mastery  of  design 

[116] 


DESIGN 

that  was  so  notable  in  his  painting,  has 
given  him  an  assured  place  in  the  kindred 
art  of  Architecture. 

Such  refined  design  as  Mr.  Piatt's  has 
always  been  rare,  but  our  art  is  not  with- 
out other  examples  of  the  compatibility 
with  the  modern  point  of  view  of  a  real 
faculty  for  design.  Even  among  the  most 
forthright  and  least  reflective  of  our 
painters — among  those  who  seem  to  have 
placed  truth  far  above  beauty  and  with 
whom  a  certain  almost  violent  effective- 
ness has  taken  the  place  of  all  subtler 
qualities — even  in  this  muscular  school  of 
landscape  there  are  different  degrees  of 
designing  power;  and  it  is,  more  than  any- 
thing else,  the  possession  of  this  power — 
the  ability  to  give  to  each  picture,  no  mat- 
ter how  instantaneously  seen  or  swiftly 
rendered,  the  consistency  of  a  pattern — 
that  places  such  men  as  Gardner  Symons 
and  George  Bellows  above  their  compan- 
ions. 

[117] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

But  the  strongest  instance  of  such  com- 
patibility is  the  work  of  the  great  painter 
we  have  lately  lost,  Winslow  Homer  (PL 
19).  A  modern  of  the  moderns,  so  original 
that  his  art  seems,  at  first  sight,  to  have 
no  connection  with  any  other,  such  an 
independent  observer  that  he  has  painted 
whole  series  of  things  seen  by  no  one  else, 
he  was  yet  essentially  a  designer,  and  it  is 
his  design  that  gives  his  work  its  authority. 
He  was  hardly  a  draughtsman,  at  least 
so  far  as  the  drawing  of  the  human  fig- 
ure is  concerned ;  he  was  rarely  a  colorist, 
in  the  full  sense,  and  was  often  content 
with  little  more  than  black  and  white;  he 
was  still  less  an  accomplished  craftsman. 
What  he  had  was  an  extraordinary  vigor 
and  originality  of  observation,  which  pro- 
vided the  substance  of  his  works,  and  an 
equally  original  and  vigorous  design  which 
gave  them  their  form.  Almost  every  work 
of  his  contains  a  new  and  striking  pattern 
to  which  every  detail  is  subordinated — a 

[118] 


DESIGN 

pattern  as  new  and  as  striking  as  the 
material  it  moulds,  and  admirably  suited 
to  the  expression  of  that  material.  It  is 
his  powerful  design,  even  more  than  his 
clearness  of  vision,  that  makes  him  the 
great  artist  he  was — the  greatest  we  have 
had  in  America  and  one  of  the  greatest 
of  the  latter  part  of  the  nineteenth  century 
in  any  country. 


[119] 


IV 
DRAWING 

The  conception  and  treatment  of  the 
subject  make  up  the  purely  intellectual 
part  of  painting:  design  is  the  purely 
artistic  or  musical  part  of  the  art.  With 
the  present  subject  we  reach  the  consid- 
eration of  those  elements  of  painting 
which  are  partly  representative  or  imita- 
tive of  nature,  and  which,  on  that  account, 
have  been  most  affected  by  the  modern, 
naturalistic  temper.  That  temper,  which 
has  led  to  indifference  as  to  subject  and 
neglect  of  design,  has  profoundly  modified 
our  conception  of  the  representative  ele- 
ments of  art;  and  this  modification  has, 
perhaps,  been  greatest  as  regards  drawing. 
We  still  retain  some  idea  of  color  as  a 
means  of  artistic  expression,  and  still 
think  of  a  colorist  as  something  more  than 

[120] 


DRAWING 

one  who  imitates  with  exactness  the  colors 
of  nature :  we  have  come  to  think  of  draw- 
ing as  a  mere  matter  of  accurate  observa- 
tion, and  of  the  draughtsman  as  one  with 
a  trained  eye  and  hand  who  can  "take  a 
measure  or  follow  a  line."  To  get  things 
of  the  right  sizes  and  shapes — our  notion 
of  drawing  has  reduced  itself  nearly  to 
that;  and  so  we  have  become  contempt- 
uous of  draughtsmanship  as  a  thing  neces- 
sary, indeed,  in  some  degree,  but  not  par- 
ticularly meritorious.  Finding  that  even 
this  kind  of  drawing  takes  long  training 
to  acquire,  we  have  supposed  that  it  re- 
quires nothing  else,  and  have  considered 
it  a  thing,  like  spelling,  to  be  learned  by 
any  diligent  person,  rating  the  ability  to 
draw  as  low  in  reckoning  the  achievement 
of  a  painter  as  we  should  the  ability  to 
spell  in  summing  up  the  work  of  a  poet. 
If  it  were  true  that  "any  one  can  learn 
to  draw,"  this  would  be  an  odd  excuse 
for  those  who  have  manifestly  failed  to  do 
[121] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

so:  but  it  is  not  true,  even  of  the  limited 
kind  of  drawing  we  are  considering.  Any 
one  who  has  ever  had  any  connection  with 
a  school  of  art  must  know  that  it  is  only 
a  very  small  proportion  of  the  students 
who  ever  attain  to  any  tolerable  pro- 
ficiency in  drawing — who  ever  learn  to  get 
an  approximation  to  the  right  sizes  and 
shapes  of  things.  To  get  these  sizes  and 
shapes  with  anything  like  real  accuracy 
and  delicacy  requires  so  rare  an  organiza- 
tion that  the  possession  of  that  alone  is 
almost  a  passport  to  immortality.  There 
is  more  to  Holbein  and  Terborch,  Metsu 
and  Vermeer  than  their  impeccable  and, 
apparently,  colorless  draughtsmanship — 
their  drawing  is  not  so  unaccented,  so  un- 
tinged  by  personality,  so  purely  natural- 
istic as  it  looks — but  even  their  accuracy 
is  inimitable  and  their  refinement  the 
despair  of  any  one  who  would  attempt  to 
imitate  them.  Their  drawing  is  by  no 
means   merely   photographic,   though   it 

[122] 


DRAWING 

often  seems  more  accurate  than  the  pho- 
tograph itself,  but  even  photographic 
drawing  is  so  difficult  that  the  world  is 
full  of  painters  to-day  who  have  given  up 
working  against  the  camera  and  are  try- 
ing to  work  with  it — who  have  found  that 
they  cannot  draw  like  a  photograph  and 
are  letting  photography  do  their  drawing 
for  them. 

If  there  were  no  more  to  drawing  than 
accuracy  of  imitation — than  that  "plac- 
ing" of  things  which  we  too  often  accept 
for  it — such  a  method  might  answer.  But 
drawing  is  a  great  expressional  art  and 
deals  with  beauty  and  significance,  not 
with  mere  fact.  Its  great  masters  are  the 
greatest  artists  that  ever  lived,  and  high 
attainment  in  it  has  always  been  rarer 
than  high  attainment  in  color.  Its  tools 
are  the  line  and  so  much  of  light  and 
shade  as  is  necessary  to  convey  the  sense 
of  bulk  and  modelling,  anything  more 
being  something  added  for  its  own  beauty 

[123] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

and  expressiveness,  not  a  part  of  the  re- 
sources of  the  draughtsman.  Its  aims  are, 
first,  to  develop  in  the  highest  degree  the 
abstract  beauty  and  significance  possessed 
by  lines  in  themselves,  more  or  less  inde- 
pendently of  representation;  second,  to  ex- 
press with  the  utmost  clearness  and  force 
the  material  significance  of  objects  and, 
especially,  of  the  human  body.  According 
as  one  or  the  other  of  these  aims  pre- 
dominates we  have  one  or  the  other  of  the 
two  great  schools  into  which  draughtsmen 
may  be  divided.  These  schools  may  be 
typified  by  the  greatest  masters  of  each, 
the  school  of  Botticelli,  or  the  school  of 
pure  line;  the  school  of  Michelangelo,  or 
the  school  of  significant  form.  Between 
these  lie  all  the  law  and  the  prophets.  Of 
course  no  artist  ever  belonged  entirely 
and  exclusively  to  either  school.  It  is  al- 
ways a  matter  of  balance  and  the  pre- 
dominance of  interest.  Even  a  Botticelli 
tried  to  put  some  significant  form  inside 

[124] 


Plate  1G. — "Erasmus,"  by  Holbein. 

In  the  Louvre. 


DRAWING 

his  beautiful  lines,  and  even  Michel- 
angelo gave  thought  to  the  abstract  beauty 
of  his  lines  apart  from  the  significant  form 
they  bounded.  To  some  extent  apart  from 
either  school  is  the  most  difficult  drawing 
of  all  to  understand  or  to  describe,  the 
drawing  of  Rembrandt. 

We  are  all  so  much,  and  so  inevitably, 
bound  by  the  conventions  of  our  own  time 
that  to  many  an  art  student  of  to-day  it  will 
seem  little  less  than  absurd  to  call  Botti- 
celli a  draughtsman  at  all.  He  could  not 
foreshorten  a  leg  or  an  arm,  but  drew 
them  always  at  full  length,  exercising  great 
ingenuity,  at  times,  in  so  arranging  his 
groups  as  to  permit  of  this  full  length 
treatment.  His  use  of  light  and  shade  is 
very  restricted  and  he  never  gives  the  il- 
lusion of  solidity  and  detachment  from 
the  background.  His  figures  are  attenu- 
ated, never  very  certain  in  their  structure 
and  articulation,  and  often  faulty  in  pro- 
portion. The  modern  student,  from  the 

[125] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

height  of  nearly  five  centuries  of  further 
study,  looks  down  with  amused  superior- 
ity, conscious  that  all  those  things  which 
were  impossible  for  Botticelli  are  com- 
monplace now,  and  within  the  power  of 
every  one.  And  yet  the  student  is  no  more 
than  a  student  whose  work  is  not  worth 
the  paper  it  is  drawn  on — the  master  re- 
mains the  master,  as  unique  and  unap- 
proachable to-day  as  in  his  own  time.  The 
student  can  place  things  better — unless 
he  is  a  rare  genius,  he  will  never  draw  one 
thousandth  part  so  well. 
A  group  which  shows  Botticelli  at  his 
best,  yet  with  all  or  nearly  all  his  short- 
comings from  our  modern  point  of  view,  is 
that  of  the  three  Graces  from  the  picture 
called  "Primavera"  (PL  20).  It  is  flatter 
than  many  of  his  works,  the  indication  of 
modelling  being  reduced  to  the  lowest 
terms,  but  this  is  of  no  consequence  what- 
ever. In  this  kind  of  art  the  indication  of 
modelling  might  be  entirely  eliminated, 

[126] 


DRAWING 

leaving  the  result  as  flat  as  Greek  vase 
painting,  with  no  detriment  to  the  essen- 
tial quality  of  it.  There  is  no  foreshorten- 
ing, the  avoidance  of  it  in  the  complicated 
arrangement  of  the  arms  being  very  notice- 
able. Even  the  feet  are  not  foreshortened, 
and,  in  one  of  the  figures,  the  toes  are 
turned  out  beyond  the  possibility  of  nat- 
ure in  the  effort  to  avoid  this  difficulty. 
But  study  this  lovely  arrangement  of 
lovely  lines;  learn,  if  you  can,  to  appreci- 
ate their  flow,  their  subtlety,  their  vitality, 
and  inimitable  grace,  the  sense  of  move- 
ment and  of  life  that  they  convey;  observe 
the  delicate  stiffness,  as  of  flower-stalks, 
in  the  lines  of  the  figures,  the  swiftness,  as 
of  living  flame,  in  the  curves  of  hair  or 
filmy  drapery;  feel  the  passionate  inten- 
sity of  the  artist,  controlled  by  rigid  dis- 
cipline and  refined  taste,  as  his  hand  fol- 
lows in  its  daintiest  modulations  and 
finest  contrasts  this  melody  of  pure  line — 
then  you  may  begin  to  understand  why 
[127] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

he  is  the  greatest  master  of  linear  drawing 
in  our  Western  art.  For  myself,  I  should 
rate  him  the  greatest  in  all  art,  placing 
him  above  even  the  best  that  China  and 
Japan  have  done  in  a  branch  of  art  in 
which  China  and  Japan  have  always 
excelled. 

The  drawing  of  Michelangelo  is  entirely 
different  from  this.  He  came  at  the  end  of 
a  long  succession  of  artists  who  had  striven 
to  master  the  significance  of  the  human 
figure,  and  he  resumed  everything  they 
had  learned.  He  is  almost  too  fond  of  fore- 
shortening, using  it  sometimes,  one  sus- 
pects, merely  to  display  his  mastery  of  it; 
and  his  drawing  is  so  far  from  flat  that  it 
depends  more  on  modelling  and  on  interior 
markings  than  on  the  contour.  He  is  a 
draughtsman,  not  a  chiaroscurist  or  a 
colorist,  therefore  he  does  not  drown  his 
forms  in  light  and  shadow  or  lose  his 
edges  in  the  mystery  of  atmosphere,  but 
you  may  see  many  a  drawing  of  his  in 

[128] 


DRAWING 

which  the  form  is  hatched  into  existence 
with  pen  or  crayon  lines  like  the  strokes 
of  a  sculptor's  chisel,  everything  being  de- 
termined except  the  final  outline.  He 
cared  little  for  mere  correctness,  indulging 
in  any  exaggeration  that  would  enhance 
the  sense  of  bulk  and  structure  which  he 
wished  to  convey,  and  the  habit  of  exag- 
geration grew  upon  him  while  the  restraint 
of  direct  study  from  nature  operated  less 
and  less,  so  that  in  his  latest  paintings  the 
human  figure  becomes  swollen  into  some- 
thing almost  monstrous,  however  titanic 
in  its  expression  of  energy.  To  have  him 
at  his  best  you  must  take  him  not  only  be- 
fore the  "Last  Judgment"  but  before  the 
Prophets  and  Sibyls — you  must  take  him 
in  the  great  central  panels  of  the  Sistine 
Ceiling.  There,  in  such  a  composition  as 
the  "  Creation  of  Adam  "  (PL  21) ,  you  have 
the  highest  reach  of  constructive  figure 
drawing,  as  in  the  "Prima vera"  you  have 
the  standard  of  pure  linear  expression. 

[129] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

There  is  magnificent  line  in  this  fresco, 
also,  the  sweeping  movement  of  the 
Creator  and  his  attendant  spirits  being 
attained  in  the  only  way  in  which  motion 
ever  has  been  attained  in  painting — by 
composition  of  line.  But  all  that  can  be 
told  by  line — even  the  difference  between 
the  energetic,  pointing  finger  of  the  Al- 
mighty and  the  limp  hand  of  the  half- 
awakened  Adam — is  subordinate  to  the 
realization  of  these  two  figures  as  solid  ob- 
jects in  space,  to  the  expression  of  their 
structure  as  human  bodies  made  of  bone 
and  muscle,  and  of  the  stresses  and  inter- 
actions of  these  bones  and  muscles  as 
affected  by  position  and  movement.  What 
particularly  concerned  Michelangelo  was 
the  roll  of  Adam's  mighty  thorax  upon 
his  pelvis ;  the  forcing  upward  of  his  right 
shoulder  on  which  his  weight  rests,  and 
the  elongation  of  the  left  pectoral  by  the 
stretching  of  the  arm;  the  strain  on  the 
muscles  of  the  neck  caused  by  the  turn  of 

[130] 


Plate  17.— "Madame  Riviere,"  by  Ingres. 

In  the  Louvre. 


DRAWING 

the  head,  and  the  swelling  and  flattening 
of  thigh  and  calf  in  the  bent  leg.  As  an 
ideal  yet  real  presentation  of  the  human 
figure,  magnificently  explicit  in  the  ren- 
dering of  all  significant  detail,  but  from 
which  everything  accidental  or  insignifi- 
cant has  been  purged  away,  there  is  noth- 
ing like  this  in  painting,  and  nothing  in 
any  art  except  the  sublime  figures  from 
the  pediment  of  the  Parthenon. 

But  why  all  this  interest  in  the  human 
body?  Well,  in  the  first  place,  because 
the  great  figure  artists  are  made  so,  and 
nothing  else  seems  to  them  so  beautiful 
or  so  significant.  And  because  meanings 
and  intentions  can  be  conveyed  by  figure 
drawing  that  can  be  conveyed  in  no  other 
way.  These  movements  and  stresses  of 
the  figure  communicate  themselves  to 
you, "and  you  feel  them  in  your  own  body, 
thereby  attaining  a  sense  of  power  and 
freedom  you  are  never  likely  to  get  from 
anything  else;  and  they  put  you  into  the 

[131] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

mood  of  the  being  who  displays  them  and 
make  you,  by  the  state  of  the  body,  di- 
vine the  state  of  the  soul.  For,  in  the  hands 
of  a  master,  the  body  is  infinitely  more 
expressive  than  the  face,  and  the  art  of 
figure  drawing  is  one  of  the  most  intellect- 
ual and  expressional  of  the  arts. 

All  drawing  proceeds  in  one  or  both  of 
these  two  ways,  yet  the  drawing  of  Rem- 
brandt seems,  at  first,  to  proceed  by 
neither.  In  his  paintings  everything  is 
so  drenched  in  light  and  shade  that  both 
drawing  and  color  almost  cease  to  exist. 
His  manner  of  drawing  is  better  studied 
in  his  etchings  or  in  his  sketches  in  pen  or 
crayon.  It  is  a  very  personal  manner,  as 
is  everything  else  about  this  extremely 
personal  and  romantic  artist.  He  seems 
to  care  nothing  about  line  for  its  own  sake, 
and  one  cannot  imagine  his  arranging  a 
bouquet  of  beautiful  lines  as  Botticelli 
would  do.  He  seems  to  care  even  less  for 
pure  form,  and  his  studies  of  the  nude 

[132] 


DRAWING 

are  misshapen,  ill-articulated,  hideous 
in  the  extreme.  Yet  with  an  extraordi- 
narily sure  instinct  he  selects  so  much  of 
line  as  shall  convey  a  sense  of  movement, 
so  much  of  form  as  shall  suggest  a  mental 
state,  while  with  every  touch  he  is  implying 
the  light  and  shade  that  shall  afterward 
envelop  the  whole.  In  the  hands  of  the 
great  genius  who  invented  it,  this  kind  of 
drawing  is  amazingly  expressive.  With  the 
merest  shorthand  of  blots  and  scratches  he 
makes  you  understand  just  what  his  char- 
acters are  doing  and  how  they  are  feeling 
— he  can  show  you,  for  instance,  the  la- 
menting of  Lot  (PL  22)  as  he  leaves  his 
home  under  the  guidance  of  the  earnest 
angel,  the  sadness  of  the  daughters  and 
the  unconcern  of  the  maids,  even  the 
angry  unreconcilableness  of  Lot's  wife, 
who  does  not  wish  to  go  and  will  surely 
look  back.  In  his  hands  such  drawing 
may  be  called  the  drawing  of  spiritual 
significance;  but,  like  all  romantic  and 

[133] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

personal  geniuses,  Rembrandt  is  a  bad 
model,  and  his  method,  in  the  hands 
of  lesser  men,  becomes  little  more  than 
picturesque  draughtsmanship — the  draw- 
ing of  effect,  rather  than  of  form,  of  the 
accidental  rather  than  of  the  essential — 
a  lower  kind  than  any  other  except  the 
merely  academic  or  the  merely  naturalistic 
and  photographic. 
The  sense  of  pure  line  being  nearly  the 
rarest  gift  of  our  Western  artists,  most  of 
the  drawing  our  art  has  produced  has 
been  rather  of  the  Michelangelesque  type 
than  of  the  Botticellian,  and  a  great  deal 
of  it  has  been  directly  descended  from 
Michelangelo  himself.  Raphael,  the  great 
designer  and  decorator,  modified  Michel- 
angelo's drawing  to  suit  his  decorative  pur- 
pose and  passed  on  his  modification  as  the 
model  of  academic  draughtsmanship.  His 
line  is  not  particularly  living,  his  struct- 
ure not  especially  realized,  but  his  draw- 
ing is  admirably  suited  to  its  role  in  his 

[134] 


DRAWING 

design,  attracting  no  attention  to  itself 
and  allowing  full  play  to  the  decorative 
effect  of  the  whole.  His  followers  imitated 
it,  without  having  the  qualities  that  ex- 
cused it,  and  produced  an  empty  and  un- 
interesting thing  which,  under  the  author- 
ity of  his  great  name,  they  long  imposed 
on  the  world. 
The  Venetians  simplified  drawing  for  the 
sake  of  color  as  Raphael  simplified  it  for 
the  sake  of  decorative  effect.  To  them  the 
detailed  rendering  of  anatomical  forms 
was  of  less  importance  than  the  broad 
glow  of  lighted  flesh,  and  they  amplified 
the  forms  and  omitted  the  accents  to  at- 
tain that  breadth  of  effect  which  is  one 
of  the  conditions  of  the  finest  color.  Yet 
they  were  by  no  means  the  poor  draughts- 
men that  they  have  generally  been  con- 
sidered. Even  in  Titian  there  are  great 
beauties  of  form  side  by  side  with  negli- 
gences and  weaknesses.  Tintoretto's  draw- 
ing was    somewhat    too    schematic   and 

[135] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

diagrammatical  but,  colorist  and  chiaros- 
curist  as  he  was,  he  had  an  extraordinary 
sense  of  swift  and  expressive  line  and  is 
one  of  the  great  masters  of  movement. 
Indeed  his  weakness  is  to  have  too  much 
movement,  his  figures  darting  and  tum- 
bling about  until  one  longs  for  a  little  sta- 
bility and  repose.  As  for  Veronese,  at  his 
best,  his  drawing,  in  its  large  and  simple 
masses,  is  almost  as  fine  as  any  one's.  His 
amplified  forms  are  yet  nobly  structural, 
his  strong  sense  of  movement  is  controlled 
by  a  fine  decorative  placidity,  his  types  are 
elevated  yet  full  of  character  directly  ob- 
served from  nature.  By  taking  the  struct- 
ural drawing  of  Michelangelo  and  broad- 
ening and  simplifying  it  for  the  sake  of 
color  and  decorative  effect  he  has  arrived 
at  something  very  like  the  Greek  con- 
ception of  form,  and  it  would  be  hard  to 
find  in  modern  art  anything  more  essen- 
tially classic  than  the  drawing  of  such 
figures  as  the  Venus  in  the  picture  (PI.  23) 

[136] 


s     ° 


P    £ 


DRAWING 

now  in  the  Metropolitan  Museum  of  New 
York — an  antique  torso  transformed  to 
palpitating  flesh  and  blood. 

Meanwhile  the  direct  followers  of  Mich- 
elangelo, much  less  intelligent,  had  exag- 
gerated his  exaggerations,  without  under- 
standing his  meaning,  and  had  created  the 
baroque  style  of  Pontormo  and  Daniele 
de  Volterra,  on  which,  and  on  direct 
study  of  the  great  master,  Rubens  founded 
his  style  of  drawing.  For  there  is  no 
greater  illusion  than  the  commonly  held 
idea  that  Rubens's  drawing  was  what  it 
was  because  he  painted  baggy  Flemish 
women ;  and  to  hold  his  models  responsible 
for  what  he  did  from  them  would  be  as 
unjust  to  Helena  Fourment  as  a  similar 
assumption  in  the  case  of  Rembrandt 
would  be  libelous  on  poor  Hendrickje 
Stopfels.  No,  Rubens' s  manner  was  de- 
liberately adopted  and  reflected  an  ideal, 
however  little  it  appeals  to  us,  as  firmly 
and  consciously  held  as  that  of  Michel- 

[137] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

angelo  or  that  of  Raphael.  His  drawing 
was  developed  from  that  of  Michelangelo 
in  the  same  way  as  his  composition  was 
developed  from  that  of  the  Venetians,  by 
giving  greater  luxuriance  to  the  curves  and 
by  an  especial  accentuation  of  the  double 
curve.  His  drawing,  like  his  composition, 
is  made  up  of  S's,  and  to  a  critic  who  found 
fault  with  the  bandy  legs  of  one  of  his 
figures  he  replied  with  a  calm  demonstra- 
tion that  this  line  was  in  accord  with  all 
tradition.  His  style  is  neither  naturalistic 
nor  personal  and  romantic,  but  essentially 
classic  and  traditional.  His  florid  and 
somewhat  flaccid  line  is  characteristic  of 
the  whole  baroque  period,  and,  somewhat 
weakened  and  prettified,  becomes  the 
keynote  of  the  rococo  also  and  of  the 
draughtsmanship  of  Boucher  and  Fra- 
gonard  (PL  24) .  The  simpering  shepherd- 
esses of  the  Frenchmen  are  unlike  enough 
to  the  overabundant  nymphs  and  god- 
desses of  the  robust  Fleming,  but  while 

[138] 


DRAWING 

the  type  has  grown  anaemic  and  slender, 
the  line  has  become  even  more  flowing 
and  decidedly  less  functional. 

It  was  against  this  overblown  and  some- 
what decadent  art  that  David  directed  his 
revolution.  Unfortunately  his  effort  for  a 
purer  taste  only  led  him  to  a  lifeless  imita- 
tion of  second-rate  antique  sculpture,  not 
to  any  really  vital  or  expressive  drawing, 
while  he  succeeded  only  too  well  in  de- 
stroying the  old  sense  of  color  and  the  old 
mastery  of  technique.  One  of  his  earliest 
successes,  the  cold  and  pompous  "Oath  of 
the  Horatii "  (PL  25),  remains  the  best 
he  could  do — his  later  work  is  still  colder 
and  more  empty.  Among  the  artists  of  the 
age  of  pseudo-classicism  which  David 
inaugurated  there  was  but  one  real  clas- 
sicist, and  that  one  was  the  only  one  who 
escaped  from  David's  influence  and  was 
long  treated  with  contempt  and  neglect. 
Prudhon's  manner  of  painting  was  founded 
on   Correggio,   his    conception    of   form 

[139] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

was,  what  David's  was  not,  truly  Greek. 
He  was  a  master  of  pure  and  beautiful 
line,  and,  consequently,  of  the  suggestion 
of  motion — he  was,  above  all,  a  master 
of  large  and  simple  masses  and  of  delicate 
and  subtle  modelling.  His  types  are  not 
heroic  like  those  of  the  great  Venetians, 
but,  since  the  great  Venetians,  there  has 
been  nothing  lovelier  than  the  recumbent 
torso  of  his  Psyche  (PL  26) ,  and  perhaps 
there  has  been  nowhere  in  painting  any- 
thing more  imbued  with  the  spirit  of  the 
lighter  art  of  the  antique  world. 

Since  Prudhon,  there  have  been  but  two 
great  draughtsmen,  Ingres  and  Millet, 
and  these  two  are  of  radically  different 
types:  Ingres  the  master  of  line  and  of 
pure  beauty,  Millet  the  master  of  mass 
and  of  expression. 

The  drawing  of  Ingres  is  not  especially 
structural.  He  who  has  been  called  "The 
impeccable  draughtsman"  is  by  no  means 
without  faults  of  articulation,  and  even 

[140] 


DRAWING 

when  he  is  correct  in  his  expression  of 
structure  and  function  he  is  not  particu- 
larly interested  in  these  things.  It  is,  above 
all,  the  line  itself  that  interests  him — the 
line  in  its  own  beauty  and  for  its  own 
character.  Yet  he  has  little  of  the  feeling 
for  movement  of  such  a  master  as  Botti- 
celli— his  line  does  not  dance  or  flow.  He 
seldom  attempts  action  in  his  figures, 
and  is  not  very  successful  when  he  does 
attempt  it.  His  line  is  static,  and  what  he 
expresses,  by  choice,  is  repose — a  repose 
so  fixed  that  it  seems  eternal.  His  "Source" 
will  stand  so  forever  while  the  water  from 
her  urn  trickles  through  her  fingers — his 
"Odalisque"  (PI.  27)  will  lie  forever  on 
her  cushions,  scarce  breathing  lest  a  breath 
disturb  her  reverie.  In  his  portraits  there 
is  something  of  the  passionate  precision 
of  Holbein,  and  the  apparent  coldness  of 
his  studies  of  the  nude  is  the  coldness  of 
intense  concentration,  colorless  because 
white  hot.  If  his  contours  are  fixed  and 

[141] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

rigid — frozen,  as  it  were,  into  immobility 
— it  is  because  only  so  could  their  infinite 
subtlety  and  beauty  be  displayed.  If  the 
"Odalisque"  had  one  particle  more  possi- 
bility of  movement  you  could  never  per- 
ceive how  wonderful  are  those  long  curves 
of  back  and  arms,  how  slight  the  varia- 
tions of  direction  that  mark  the  junctures 
of  the  muscles  or  the  transitions  from  the 
bony  to  the  fleshy  planes.  Like  his  com- 
position, his  drawing  is  set  for  all  time 
into  a  crystalline  perfection.  There  was 
never  anything  like  it  before,  there  can 
never  be  anything  like  it  again.  It  is  unique 
and  incomparable,  like  the  design  of 
Raphael  or  the  grandeur  of  Michelangelo. 
The  drawing  of  Millet,  on  the  other  hand, 
is  little  concerned  with  pure  line;  it  occu- 
pies itself  with  bulk  and  action,  with  the 
expression  of  bodily  strains  and  tensions 
and  the  resistance  to  weights.  It  is  de- 
scended from  the  drawing  of  Michelangelo, 
and  is  the  most  effective  drawing  of  this 

[142] 


en    £ 


DRAWING 

kind  since  that  of  the  great  Florentine, 
but  it  proceeds  differently.  Millet's  figures 
are  generally  clothed,  and  could  not  show 
Michelangelo's  particularity  of  articula- 
tion, even  if  their  creator  desired  them  to 
do  so.  But  in  his  drawing,  as  in  his  com- 
position and  his  way  of  telling  a  story, 
Millet  remains  the  great  eliminator.  He 
never  worked  from  nature,  but  he  ob- 
served a  given  action  again  and  again, 
drew  it  over  and  over  until  he  had  mas- 
tered what  was  essential  in  it,  gave  that 
essence  with  supreme  force  and  clearness 
and  gave  nothing  else.  More  than  any 
other  artist  since  the  great  Greek  sculptors 
he  achieved  the  typical,  so  that  an  action 
once  studied  by  him  is  given  its  true  and 
eternal  expression  and  is  not  to  be  done 
again.  His  sower  is  The  Sower,  now  and 
forever,  and  his  "Woman  Drawing  Wa- 
ter "  carries  her  buckets  as  buckets  have 
been  and  must  be  carried  since  the  begin- 
ning of  the  world. 

[143] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

How  constantly  he  was  preoccupied  with 
the  exact  notation  of  a  weight,  and  the 
amount  of  resistance  determined  by  it, 
may  be  shown  by  many  passages  in  his 
letters.  You  have  heard  how  anxious  he 
was  that  his  "Woman  Drawing  Water" 
should  "look  as  if  she  were  carrying  nei- 
ther more  nor  less  than  the  weight  of  the 
buckets  full  of  water."  In  the  exact  ex- 
pression of  this  weight  by  the  tension  of 
the  arms  and  the  dragging  down  of  the 
shoulders,  in  the  erectness  of  the  body  be- 
tween its  equal  burdens,  in  the  slow  and 
shuffling  walk  enforced  by  the  action,  he 
has  achieved  a  monumental  majesty;  and 
his  figure  looks  as  permanent  as  an 
Egyptian  colossus.  But  hear  him  again, 
explaining  the  picture  in  the  Chicago  Art 
Institute,  "The  New-born  Calf."  "The 
expression  of  two  men  carrying  a  load 
on  a  litter,"  he  says,  "naturally  depends 
on  the  weight  which  rests  upon  their 
arms  .  .  .  this  simple  fact  is  the  whole 

[144] 


DRAWING 

reason  of  the  .  .  .  solemnity"  which  his 
detractors  thought  absurd  but  which  is, 
in  truth,  the  great  merit  of  the  picture.  It 
is  the  logical  and  inevitable  result  of  a 
large  and  typical  rendering  of  the  action, 
and  Millet  made  his  two  peasants  carry 
the  calf,  "as  if  it  were  the  Ark  of  the 
Covenant"  because  that  is  the  way  men 
do  carry  a  weight.  He  could  even  give  to 
a  man  wheeling  a  barrow-load  of  dung 
(PI.  28)  all  the  solemnity  and  grandeur  of 
style  of  one  of  Michelangelo's  prophets. 
Millet  and  Ingres  are,  in  their  several 
ways,  capital  examples  of  what  great 
drawing  is.  For  examples  of  what  it  is  not 
one  may  go  to  almost  any  of  their  succes- 
sors. Since  Millet  a  hundred  artists  have 
painted  peasants,  but,  for  lack  of  his  large 
comprehension  of  form,  they  have  pro- 
duced nothing  but  trivial  anecdotes,  or 
sentimentalities,  or  snapshot  photographs 
of  accidental  and  momentary  conditions. 
Since  Ingres  a  hundred  artists  have  tried 

[145] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

to  continue  the  traditions  of  the  school, 
but  have  produced  nothing  better  than 
the  academic  literalism  of  Gerome  or  the 
sweet  insipidity  of  Bougereau.  The  draw- 
ing of  Bougereau,  with  its  superficial  cor- 
rectness and  its  entire  lack  of  functional 
expression;  with  its  hands  which  never 
grasp  anything  and  its  feet  which  never 
support  any  weight;  with  its  apparent 
idealization  which  amounts  to  no  more 
than  the  prettifying  of  studio  models — 
this  is  the  drawing  most  trying  to  the  soul 
of  any  one  capable  of  understanding  what 
real  draughtsmanship  is ;  yet  it  is  precisely 
this  drawing  that  people  will  persist  in 
supposing  the  thing  desired  by  those  of  us 
who  raise  our  voices  against  the  formless- 
ness of  impressionism. 

Almost  all  the  drawing  of  the  mid- 
nineteenth  century  was  sheer  naturalism 
and  so  is  the  larger  part  of  what  we  still 
have.  With  the  exception  of  Baudry,  who 
had  a  real  feeling  for  structure  and  action, 

[146] 


DRAWING 

and  of  Leighton,  who  sometimes  achieved 
a  large  nobility  of  type,  most  of  the  aca- 
demic painters  did  little  more  than  clothe 
an  accurate  transcript  of  ordinary  nature 
with  a  certain  specious  elegance,  while 
the  non-academic  painters  only  left  out 
the  elegance.  For  the  students  of  light  and 
color  drawing  became  but  a  disagreeable 
necessity,  as  for  the  virtuosi  it  is  a  mere 
regulation  of  the  shapes  and  sizes  of  the 
brush  strokes  with  which  all  things  are 
represented.  In  this  country  we  have,  in 
George  De  Forest  Brush,  a  lover  of  the 
line,  and  among  our  mural  painters  one 
or  two  have  tried  to  attain  to  style.  But, 
for  the  most  part,  the  conception  of  draw- 
ing as  anything  more  than  the  accurate 
placing  of  things  has  disappeared. 

Against  this  literalism  there  was  bound 
to  be  a  reaction,  but  when  it  came  it  did 
not  take  the  form  either  of  the  significant 
draughtsmanship  of  Michelangelo  and  Mil- 
let or  the  linear  beauty  of  Botticelli  and 

[147] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

Ingres.  It  began  with  Puvis  de  Chavannes 
and  took  the  form  of  a  decorative  simpli- 
fication of  the  figure  in  the  line  of  that 
adopted  by  Raphael,  but  gradually  pushed 
much  further.  In  the  earlier  work  of  Puvis 
there  are  figures  of  great  beauty  that  Raph- 
ael himself  might  not  have  disowned — 
figures  in  which  the  simplification  of  nat- 
ural forms  has  proceeded  no  further  than 
to  give  a  certain  dignity  of  style  and  to  ele- 
vate the  result  above  the  mere  imitation  of 
a  given  model.  Such  figures  as  those  in  the 
mural  painting  at  Amiens  called  "Rest" 
(PI.  29)  are  beautiful  examples  of  what 
decorative  draughtsmanship  should  be, 
the  variation  from  nature  being  just  suf- 
ficient to  avoid  the  literal  and  to  fit  them 
for  their  role  in  a  poetic  and  decorative 
composition.  But  the  austerity  of  Pu vis's 
temper  was  not  satisfied  and,  in  later  work, 
we  find  him  emulating  the  primitive  paint- 
ers of  Italy,  drawing  figures  that  resemble 
those  of  Giotto  in  their  blocky  simplicity, 

[148] 


DRAWING 

and  attaining  thereby  something  of  Giot- 
to's architectural  solemnity  of  effect.  In 
his  latest  work  he  seems  to  me  to  lose  his 
grip  on  drawing  altogether  and  to  produce 
figures  that  are  out  of  joint  and  wrongly 
put  together,  or  that  cease  to  be  figures  at 
all  and  become  mere  spaces  of  pinkish 
color  (PL  30).  His  feeling  for  arrange- 
ment and  spacing  and  his  use  of  a  beauti- 
ful if  limited  color  scheme  still  save  him, 
and  he  remains  a  decorator;  but  he  has 
ceased  to  be  a  draughtsman. 
The  only  credible  account  I  have  seen  of 
some  of  the  latest  aberrations  of  modern 
art  is  that  they  are  an  attempt  to  carry  still 
farther  what  Puvis  had  already  carried  too 
far :  to  bring  about  the  entire  disassociation 
of  abstract  line  and  mass  from  representa- 
tion; to  make  art  altogether  "subjective," 
reflecting  nothing  but  the  whim  of  the 
artist  and  having  no  connection,  except 
in  the  artist's  consciousness,  with  any- 
thing outside  itself.  For  models  we  are  to 

[149] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

go  back  of  Giotto  and  even  of  the  Byzan- 
tines, and  found  our  practice  on  that  of 
savage  peoples,  Hottentots,  or  Alaskan 
Indians,  and  by  way  of  remedying  the 
evils  of  too  much  naturalism  we  are  to 
destroy  altogether  what  the  world  has 
loved  as  art.  In  the  hands  of  young  Pa- 
risian students,  bitten  by  the  desire  of 
notoriety,  this  programme  has  produced 
results  unspeakable  and  almost  unbeliev- 
able, more  hideous,  morally  and  materi- 
ally, than  any  of  the  savage  art  it  emulates. 
It  is  root  and  branch  work,  certainly,  but 
this  short  method  with  naturalism  will 
not  answer.  The  remedy  is  far  worse  than 
the  disease.  It  is  time  that  the  Classic 
Spirit  should  protest,  in  the  name  of  right 
reason,  that  if  art  is  not  a  mere  imitation 
of  nature  no  more  is  it  sheer  irresponsi- 
bility and  the  unregulated  exploitation  of 
individuality.  The  art  of  painting  is  an 
art  of  arrangment  of  lines,  spaces,  and 
colors  which    shall    express    the    artist's 

[150] 


Plate  20. — "The  Three  Graces"  (Primavera),  by  Botticelli. 

In  the  Academy,  Florence. 


DRAWING 

mind  while  suggesting  and  recalling  the 
aspects  of  nature ;  and  if  it  is  not  art  with- 
out that  arrangement  which  removes  it 
from  literalism,  it  is  not  painting  without 
such  degree  of  imitation  as  shall  give  the 
necessary  suggestion.  In  the  most  perfect 
works  of  art  the  expressive  and  the  imita- 
tive elements  are  so  intimately  combined 
that  it  is  impossible  to  separate  them,  and 
one  knows  not  whether  the  work  is  more 
admirable  for  its  beauty  and  expressive- 
ness or  for  its  truth.  In  inferior  works  the 
one  or  the  other  character  predominates, 
but  if  both  are  not  present  in  some  con- 
siderable degree  the  work  ceases  to  be  of 
any  importance.  Of  the  two  extremes,  the 
self-abandonment  to  mere  expression  is 
the  more  dangerous,  for  that  way  lie  ec- 
centricity and  madness ;  and  the  most  pro- 
saic picture  ever  painted  by  the  most 
prosaic  Dutchman  is  far  more  like  the 
greatest  art  than  is  the  rabid  self-exploita- 
tion of  these  modern  savages. 

[151] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

I  should  not  have  felt  it  necessary  to  treat 
this,  so-called,  post-impressionist  move- 
ment with  any  seriousness — feeling  sure 
that  the  mere  P'ght  of  time  must  settle  its 
business,  and  that  without  long  delay — 
were  it  not  that,  at  the  present  moment, 
a  number  of  critics,  some  of  whom  have 
earned  by  intelligent  work  the  right  to  be 
heard,  are  trying  to  convince  themselves 
and  the  public  that  it  is  vital  and  impor- 
tant. With  some  of  them  their  state  of  mind 
seems  to  be  the  result  of  long  occupation 
with  primitive  art,  which  has  so  accus- 
tomed them  to  finding  beauty  of  line  or 
mass  where  there  is  little  naturalism  that 
they  cannot  see  these  qualities  where  they 
are  combined  with  a  knowledge  of  nature. 
They  imagine  that  Matisse  and  his  fol- 
lowers have  rediscovered  the  line  because 
there  is  evidently  nothing  else  in  their 
work;  forgetting  that  the  great  and  really 
difficult  task  is  to  draw  beautifully  and 
expressively  without  drawing  falsely,  and 

[152  1 


DRAWING 

that  it  is  of  no  advantage  to  the  abstract 
beauty  of  a  figure  that  its  joints  should 
bend  the  wrong  way,  or  that  it  should  have 
no  joints  at  all  but  resemble  something 
between  a  block  of  wood  and  a  jelly-fish. 
For  others  there  is  no  such  excuse,  and 
one  can  only  imagine  that  they  are  fright- 
ened by  the  long  series  of  critical  blunders 
that  has  marked  the  nineteenth  century, 
and  are  determined,  this  time,  not  to  be 
caught  napping.  Nearly  all  our  greatest 
painters — and  some  that  are,  perhaps, 
not  quite  so  great  as  we  are  just  now  in- 
clined to  think  them — have  been  first 
misunderstood  and  abused  as  mere  ec- 
centrics. It  was  so  with  Millet  and  with 
Corot,  it  was  so  with  Monet  and  Whistler ; 
and  in  each  case  the  unhappy  critics  had 
to  reverse  themselves  and,  in  some  cases, 
to  swing  to  the  other  extreme  and  over- 
praise as  they  had  overblamed.  Here  is 
a  set  of  men  whose  art  is  so  crazy  that 
anything  which  formerly  seemed  eccentric 

[153] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

pales  to  bourgeois  commonplace  in  the 
comparison.  What  so  natural  as  to  assume 
that  these,  too,  are  great  men,  and  to  take 
the  inevitable  step  at  once,  and  as  grace- 
fully as  possible?  Their  only  answer  to 
criticism  is  to  assume  an  attitude  of 
superiority  and  to  say,  smilingly  and  con- 
descendingly, "Of  course  you  could  not 
be  expected  to  understand."  Let  us  hasten 
to  show  that  we  are  not  so  stupid  as  our 
brothers  of  the  past.  If  we  do  not  under- 
stand either,  at  least  we  can  exercise  the 
virtue  of  faith,  which  has  been  defined 
as  believing  what  one  knows  to  be  untrue. 
In  the  tales  of  Hans  Christian  Ander- 
sen one  may  read  how  a  certain  monarch 
was  supposed  to  be  possessed  of  a  suit  of 
clothes  of  extraordinary  richness  and 
beauty  but  quite  invisible  to  all  unintelli- 
gent and  stupid  people.  The  King  himself 
had  never  seen  them,  but  as  long  as  others 
believed  in  their  existence  he  kept  his 
mouth  shut  and  received  with  compla- 
[154] 


DRAWING 

cence  the  glory  which  came  to  him  as  their 
possessor.  The  Prime  Minister  and  the 
Lord  Chamberlain  and  the  members  of 
the  Privy  Council  were  all  equally  blind 
to  these  wonderful  garments,  but  each 
thought  the  others  saw  them,  and  so  they 
joined  in  a  chorus  of  praises,  lauding  the 
magnificence  of  the  stuff,  the  splendor  of 
the  embroidery,  and  the  perfection  of  the 
cut.  Even  the  little  page  boys  solemnly 
gathered  up  nothing,  and  pretended  to 
carry  the  tails  of  the  robe  which  they 
thought  must  certainly  be  there  if  only 
they  were  bright  enough  to  see  it.  At  last 
it  was  determined  that  his  Majesty  should 
walk  in  public  procession  through  his 
capital,  that  every  one  might  have  an 
opportunity  to  behold  the  wonderful 
clothes.  There  were  heralds  and  trum- 
peters, making  a  great  noise  with  their 
trumpets,  and  knights  and  men  at  arms 
and  judges  and  clergy,  and,  at  last,  under 
a  canopy,  the  King  himself,  walking  very 

[155] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

grandly  with  his  head  in  air  and  followed 
by  the  three  pages  that  bore  the  invisible 
train.  And  the  people  all  rubbed  their  eyes 
and  each  one  said  to  himself,  "Dear  me! 
Am  I  so  stupid?  I  really  can't  see  any- 
thing"; and  then  they  all  shouted,  "Long 
live  the  King  and  his  incomparable 
clothes!"  But  presently  the  procession 
passed  by  a  place  where  there  stood  a  tiny 
boy  in  the  street;  and  the  boy,  not  being 
old  enough  to  know  better  and,  perhaps, 
not  having  been  well  brought  up,  spoke 
right  out  in  a  loud  voice,  saying:  "But 
he  hasn't  got  anything  on!"  And  then — 
well,  then  every  one  suddenly  saw  that  his 
Majesty  was  walking  through  the  streets 
in  his  shirt. 

Now  it  may  be  my  own  lack  of  intelli- 
gence that  prevents  my  seeing  the  wonder- 
ful garment  of  art  worn  by  some  of  the 
latest  exponents  of  modernism.  The  rich 
stuff  and  the  splendid  embroidery,  which 
others  assure  me  they  see,  may  really  be 

[156] 


B 
03 


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g 
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u 


DRAWING 

there  and  I  may  be  too  blind  or  too  stupid 
to  perceive  it.  But  if  the  gods  made  me 
stupid  it  rests  with  myself  to  be  honest; 
and  so  I  can  only  cry,  with  the  little  boy 
in  the  street:  "They  have  nothing  on! 
They  have  nothing  on!" 


[157] 


LIGHT  AND  SHADE  AND  COLOR 

The  several  elements  of  the  art  of  paint- 
ing are  so  intertwined,  and  run  into  and 
out  of  each  other  in  so  complex  a  manner, 
that  it  is  very  difficult  to  deal  with  any  one 
of  them  separately  and  without  reference 
to  the  others.  One  cannot  speak  of  the 
treatment  of  the  subject  without  reference 
to  design,  or  of  design  without  reference 
to  drawing;  still  less  can  one  separate  the 
consideration  of  light  and  shade  from  that 
of  color,  for,  in  painting  of  any  ripeness  of 
development,  each  of  these  elements  is 
profoundly  modified  by  the  other.  They 
are,  as  it  were,  the  warp  and  woof  of  a 
united  texture  which  overlies  and  en- 
riches the  structure  of  design.  And,  again, 
the  very  words  light  and  shade  mean  a 
number  of  different  things  for  which  we 
f  1581 


LIGHT  AND  SHADE  AND  COLOR 

need,  but  have  not,  clearly  differentiated 
terms.  The  vocabulary  of  our  language, 
in  matters  of  art,  is  singularly  limited; 
and,  while  it  has  been  somewhat  enriched 
of  recent  years,  it  has  also  been  confused 
by  using  old  words  in  new  senses,  so  that 
we  are  little  better  off  than  before.  Per- 
haps we  can  best  begin  by  separating  light 
and  shade  into  three  forms  which,  how- 
ever, more  or  less  overlap  and  run  into 
each  other  and  can  seldom  be  entirely 
separated.  We  shall  call  them  light  and 
dark,  which  is  an  element  of  design; 
modelling,  which  is  an  element  of  draw- 
ing; and  light  and  shadow,  or  true 
chiaroscuro,  which  is  a  nearly  indepen- 
dent element  of  painting  and  tends  in  its 
fullest  development  to  obscure  or  obliter- 
ate all  the  others. 
You  have  light  and  dark,  in  its  simplest 
form,  in  Greek  vase  painting,  in  which 
there  are  either  light  figures  on  a  dark 
ground  or  dark  figures  on  a  light  ground, 

[159] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

the  division  into  light  and  dark  being 
merely  an  accentuation  of  the  primary 
division  into  filled  and  empty  spaces  and 
having  nothing  to  do  with  light  and  shad- 
ow or  even  with  modelling.  But  if,  in- 
stead of  working  in  two  tones,  the  artist 
works  in  polychromy,  it  is  evident  that, 
without  any  modelling  or  light  and  shad- 
ow, he  may  have  as  many  different  de- 
grees of  light  and  dark  as  there  are  dif- 
ferent colors  in  his  scheme,  each  color 
having  its  own  place  in  a  scale  of  light 
and  dark  without  regard  to  its  special 
quality  as  color.  Here  we  approach  the 
old  and  best  sense  of  that  much  abused 
word  "values,"  which  has  come  to  mean 
so  many  things  that  it  now  means  next 
to  nothing.  As  Fromentin  used  it,  it  signi- 
fied the  degree  of  light  or  dark,  on  a  scale 
from  black  to  white,  of  any  object  in  a 
picture,  considered  as  a  whole,  without 
regard  to  its  own  light  and  shade.  Now, 
into  this  painting  in  flat  colors,  which  have 

[160] 


LIGHT  AND  SHADE  AND  COLOR 

their  necessary  values,  you  may  introduce 
a  certain  amount  of  that  light  and  shade 
which  makes  modelling  without  altering 
the  essential  nature  of  your  work,  each 
space  of  color  retaining  its  complete  in- 
dividuality as  a  space  of  blue  or  white  or 
red  and  its  own  value  in  the  scale  of  light 
and  dark,  the  lights  and  shades  within 
its  boundaries  being  quite  subordinate. 
This  is  the  usual  condition  in  primitive 
painting  and  is  the  condition  to  which,  as 
we  shall  see,  classic  and,  especially,  dec- 
orative painting  tends,  for  several  reasons, 
to  return.  But  if,  in  the  desire  to  procure 
the  illusion  of  solidity  and  of  the  existence 
of  figures  or  objects  in  free  space,  you 
push  the  degree  of  light  and  shade  in 
individual  objects  much  further,  an  en- 
tirely new  condition  results.  The  dif- 
ference between  the  light  and  the  shadow 
on  a  given  object  may  become  greater 
than  the  difference  between  the  value  of 
that  object  as  a  whole  and  that  of  another 

[161] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

object  near  it,  and  the  lights  of  the  two 
objects  are  bound  together  as  light  and 
their  shadows  as  shade.  The  result  is  a 
new  pattern,  overlying  and  cutting  across 
the  original  linear  pattern,  and  more  or 
less  independent  of  it.  In  its  fullest  devel- 
opment this  true  light  and  shadow  be- 
comes so  predominant  that  the  original 
linear  pattern  ceases  to  have  any  impor- 
tance and  the  original  scheme  of  separate 
or  local  colors  is  absorbed  in  the  color, 
whether  warm  or  cold,  of  the  light,  and 
the  contrasting  color  of  the  shadow. 
Finally,  as  distance  and  open  air  are  at- 
tempted, all  colors,  all  values,  and  all  light 
and  shade  are  modified  by  atmosphere 
and  the  influence  of  the  sky,  color  and 
chiaroscuro  mingle  and  confound  their 
identities,  and  dance  from  end  to  end  of 
the  canvas  transcending  all  bounds  and 
absorbing  everything  into  themselves. 

It  is  late  in  the  history  of  painting  before 
light  and   shade  progresses  beyond   the 

[162] 


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LIGHT  AND  SHADE  AND  COLOR 

stage  of  modelling.  Leonardo  da  Vinci  has 
always  been  considered  an  innovator  in 
light  and  shade,  and  a  great  chiaroscurist, 
yet  he  did  little  more  than  complete  the 
modelling  of  his  figures,  making  them  look 
like  figures  in  the  round  where  earlier  men 
had  been  contented  with  figures  in  relief. 
Both  Michelangelo  and  Raphael  were  con- 
tented to  rest  here,  and  so,  for  the  most 
part,  were  their  followers  and  imitators. 
Even  much  later,  painters  like  Caravaggio 
and  Ribera — the  tenebrists,  as  they  were 
called — only  darkened  the  shadows  to 
blackness,  exaggerating  and  vulgarizing 
their  modelling  without  substituting  light 
and  shadow  for  it  as  a  distinct  element  of 
expression.  The  first  painters  to  use  light 
and  shadow,  in  its  fullness,  as  an  over- 
lying pattern,  independent  of  the  linear 
pattern  under  it,  were  Correggio  and  the 
Venetians;  and  even  with  them  the  orig- 
inal linear  pattern  maintains  its  impor- 
tance, so  that  an  outline  drawing  of  one  of 

[163] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

their  pictures  always  gives  an  idea  of  the 
essential  nature  of  the  design,  though  it 
robs  it  of  its  richness.  With  Rembrandt 
we  reach  the  stage  of  fully  developed 
chiaroscuro  absorbing  or  overriding  every- 
thing else,  so  that  an  outline  drawing  of 
one  of  his  compositions  is  almost  incon- 
ceivable and,  if  attempted,  would  give 
no  idea  of  the  real  picture  because  omit- 
ting the  thing  on  which  he  principally 
relies  for  his  effect. 

In  the  hands  of  its  especial  masters  light 
and  shade  is  a  powerful  means  of  poetic 
and  imaginative  expression.  With  Correg- 
gio  (PL  31)  the  glow  of  light  on  a  shoulder 
or  a  bosom,  the  soft  veil  of  shadow  on  a 
woman's  side,  act  as  mitigants  to  a  too 
voluptuous  ideal,  and  remove  his  creations 
into  a  realm  of  dreamy  enjoyment  where 
is  no  conscience  and  no  responsibility — 
nothing  but  an  endless  lotus-eating  calm. 
With  the  tempestuous  Tintoretto  every- 
thing is  changed.  Light  and  shade  be- 

[164] 


LIGHT  AND  SHADE  AND  COLOR 

comes  lurid,  fantastic,  full  of  wild  energy. 
He  bars  his  figures  with  unexpected  and, 
sometimes,  unaccountable  cast  shadows; 
his  light  comes  from  anywhere  and  no- 
where and  brings  out  a  head  or  arm  into 
sharp  relief  and  throws  a  body  into  deep 
shadow.  His  original  design  is  crossed  and 
recrossed  by  another  one  of  light  and 
darkness  which  everywhere  contradicts  it 
and  yet  greatly  enhances  its  effect.  With 
Rembrandt  light  and  shadow  become  the 
only  things  of  consequence,  and  express, 
as  nothing  else  could,  his  strangely  poetic 
mind.  With  them  he  can  reveal  the  spirit- 
ual and  create  the  supernatural,  he  can 
place  you  in  presence  of  a  miracle  or  make 
you  see  the  human  soul. 

One  of  the  most  acute  of  present-day 
critics  *  has  maintained,  in  a  recent  book, 
that  the  art  of  imaginative  design  is  de- 
pendent on  the  use  of  contours  and  the 
avoidance  of  "chiaroscuro  and  modelling 

*  Bernard  Berenson.    A  Sienese  Painter  of  the  Francis- 
can Legend,  Dent.,  1909. 

[165] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

in  the  round,"  because  modelling  "never 
allows  us  to  forget  our  bodies."  It  seems 
to  me  that  Mr.  Berenson's  exclusive  de- 
votion to  Italian  art  has  made  him 
strangely  forgetful  of  Rembrandt,  and  that 
his  error  is  also,  in  part,  due  to  a  confusion 
of  two  things  which,  as  I  have  tried  to 
show,  are  essentially  different:  modelling 
and  true  chiaroscuro.  Modelling  does,  in- 
deed, insist  upon  the  body — true  chiaro- 
scuro conceals  it.  In  its  fully  developed 
form,  light  and  shadow  becomes  mystery, 
absorbs  substance  as  well  as  line,  and  be- 
comes the  one  means  for  the  expression 
of  the  otherwise  inexpressible.  It  is  not  in 
the  work  of  any  Sienese  linealist,  nor 
even  in  the  work  of  any  Oriental,  that 
religious  emotion  and  the  awe  of  the 
supernatural  have  been  most  truly  trans- 
lated into  the  terms  of  art;  it  is  in  the 
painting  of  "The  Supper  at  Emaus"  and 
the  etching  of  "Dr.  Faustus  "  (PL  32). 
But  just  because  light  and  shade  is  so 

[166] 


LIGHT  AND  SHADE  AND  COLOR 

mysterious  and  so  absorbing,  because 
it  tends  to  take  the  place  of  design  and 
drawing  and  even  color,  it  is  a  dangerous 
tool.  It  requires  a  great  imaginative  genius 
to  make  what  it  gives  us  a  fair  exchange 
for  what  it  takes  away.  In  the  hands  of 
smaller  men  than  Rembrandt — and  even 
in  his  when,  for  the  moment,  his  imagina- 
tion is  in  abeyance — it  degenerates  into  a 
rather  paltry  picturesqueness — an  insist- 
ence on  the  accident  of  lighting  rather 
than  on  the  nature  of  the  thing  lighted. 
The  true  lover  of  either  form  or  color  will 
always  keep  it  in  subordination  to  other 
things,  using  it  as  an  ornament  to  his 
work,  not  as  the  substance  of  it. 
Even  after  Rembrandt  there  was  one 
more  step  for  light  and  shade  to  take,  and 
that  step  it  took  in  the  latter  part  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  That  step  was  to 
unite  itself  with  color  so  that  the  two  were 
no  longer  distinguishable,  to  bend  both 
to  the  rendering  of  natural  light  in  the 

[167] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

open  air,  and  to  make  light  the  only  real 
subject  of  painting,  the  objects  which 
reflect  it  being  no  longer  of  any  individual 
interest.  The  impressionist  movement, 
which  effected  this  step,  was  undoubtedly 
of  some  service,  and  the  step  itself  was, 
to  some  extent,  an  advance.  It  brought 
back  into  art  the  element  of  color  when 
that  element  was  sadly  needed,  for  most 
modern  color,  through  exact  imitation  of 
studio  effects  and  through  the  decay  of 
technical  knowledge,  had  become  cold  and 
muddy;  and  it  discovered  things  about 
natural  effects  of  light  which  may  prove 
useful  to  future  masters  who  shall  have 
thoroughly  assimilated  them  and  can 
employ  them  without  undue  insistence  on 
their  importance.  Its  great  defect  was  its 
neglect  of  art;  for  color,  even  more  than 
drawing,  requires  that  art  shall  control  the 
study  of  nature,  and  that  things  shall  be 
done  for  the  purpose  of  expression,  not 
merely  for  the  love  of  imitation. 

[168] 


LIGHT  AND  SHADE  AND  COLOR 

But  even  as  science,  impressionism  was 
not  wholly  new.  Its  greatest  discoveries 
are  supposed  to  be  the  colored  shadow, 
especially  the  blue  or  violet  shadow,  and 
the  use  of  broken  color  instead  of  united 
tones.  In  both  of  these  discoveries  it  had 
been  anticipated.  Leonardo  shows  us,  in 
his  note-books,  that  he  had  not  only  ob- 
served the  blue  shadow  but  was  perfectly 
aware  of  its  reason,  and  he  has  written 
long  passages  of  description  of  natural 
effects  that  are  as  acute  in  observation  of 
the  action  of  light  and  atmosphere  as  if 
they  were  the  work  of  a  painter  of  to-day. 
The  colored  shadow  and  the  broken  tone 
were  the  common  property  of  all  good 
colorists,  the  only  difference  between  the 
best  of  the  old  work  and  the  best  of  the 
new,  in  that  respect,  being  that  the  old 
painters  were  more  particular  that  their 
method  of  securing  the  broken  tone  should 
not  be  obvious  and  should  not  interfere 
with  the  beauty  of  their  surfaces.  And 

[169] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

the  blue  shadow  itself  had  been  painted 
by  Vermeer.  Indeed  this  extraordinary 
painter  had  anticipated  many  of  the  most 
modern  devices  for  representing  light  and 
atmosphere,  including  that  manner  of 
painting  in  minute  dots  which  has  been 
given  the  name  of  pointillism. 

Leonardo  not  only  gives  us  his  observa- 
tions of  natural  effects — he  gives  us  his 
reason  for  not  using  them  in  his  art. 
There  are  several  long  passages  among  his 
notes  describing  the  effects  of  foliage  as 
seen  by  transmitted  and  reflected  light,  in 
which  the  blue  surface  lights,  the  yellow- 
ness of  transparent  leaves  seen  from  below, 
and  the  mottling  of  these  leaves  by  the 
shadows  of  other  leaves  which  come  be- 
tween them  and  the  sun,  are  considered 
with  great  particularity.  And  then  comes 
this  warning:  "Never  represent  leaves 
as  though  transparent  in  the  sun,  became 
they  are  always  indistinct"  And  again: 
"The  structure  of  such  a  leaf  is  indis- 

[170] 


Plate  2;}. — "Venus  and  Mars  Bound  by  Cupid,"  by  Veronese. 

Property  of  the  Metropolitan  Museum  of  Art. 


LIGHT  AND  SHADE  AND  COLOR 

tinct,  and  the  imitation  of  it  is  to  be 
avoided."  There  speaks  the  true  classic 
spirit.  The  structure  is  indistinct,  and  no 
amount  of  illusion  will  compensate,  to  the 
true  classicist,  for  the  lack  of  clarity  and 
for  the  lack  of  structure.  Impressionism, 
which  makes  light  its  only  subject,  and 
ruthlessly  sacrifices  clarity  and  structure 
in  the  interest  of  illusion,  is  acceptable  in 
inverse  proportion  to  the  essential  beauty 
and  interest  of  the  objects  represented. 
It  may  be  admirable  in  still-life,  where  no 
one  cares  about  the  objects  themselves. 
They  are  glorified  by  the  light  rather 
than  made  insignificant  by  it.  It  is  not 
for  nothing  that  so  many  of  the  best  can- 
vases of  the  moderns  are  pictures  of  still- 
life,  and  it  is  the  modern  study  of  light 
and  color  for  its  own  sake  that  is  respon- 
sible for  the  doctrine  that  still-life  is  as 
good  a  subject  for  art  as  any  other.  It  is, 
indeed,  a  better  subject  than  any  other 
for  this  kind  of  art,  for  it  entails  less  loss 

[171] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

to  set  against  the  gain.  In  the  treatment 
of  landscape  impressionism  may  still  be 
tolerable,  because  light  naturally  plays 
a  great  role  in  landscape  painting;  but 
no  painter  who  cares  for  the  anatomy  of 
earth  or  the  growth  and  life  of  trees  will 
ever  be  quite  satisfied  with  it.  In  figure 
painting  it  is  intolerable.  In  its  hands  the 
human  figure,  the  most  beautiful  and  the 
most  interesting  thing  in  all  the  world,  is 
merged  in  the  landscape,  as  the  landscape 
itself  is  lost  in  the  light  that  falls  upon  it, 
and  man  himself  becomes  no  more  than 
an  accident  among  other  accidents.  If 
Leonardo  could  not  bring  himself  to  paint 
a  leaf  "transparent  in  the  sun,"  what 
would  he  have  said  to  some  of  our  modern 
pictures  in  which  the  glorious  human 
body,  that  miracle  of  nature,  becomes  no 
more  than  a  surface  on  which  the  pattern 
of  the  leaf-shadows  may  trace  itself 
as  on  a  smooth  stone  ?  Still  less  could  he 
have  endured  to  see  it  made  a  lay  figure 

[172] 


LIGHT  AND  SHADE  AND  COLOR 

for  the  study  of  cross  lights,  red  on  one 
side  and  blue  on  the  other  as  if  it  stood 
between  a  chemist's  bottles. 

But  if  modern  literalism  has  produced 
colorlessness,  so  that  a  modern  gallery 
seems  filled  with  chalky  and  muddy  and 
blackish  pictures,  from  which  the  splen- 
dor and  the  subtlety  of  true  color  are  alike 
absent;  if  the  impressionistic  study  of 
color  has  obliterated  form  and  structure 
without  attaining  the  fullness  of  decorative 
beauty ;  yet  the  way  out  is  not  by  following 
the  post-impressionists  into  the  denial  of 
all  connection  with  nature  and  the  erect- 
ing of  subjective  emotion  as  the  only 
standard.  In  color,  as  in  form,  we  come 
back  to  the  fundamental  truth  that  paint- 
ing is  a  representative  art,  and  that  while 
its  version  of  nature  is  a  heightened  and 
glorified  one  it  is  not  a  denial  of  natural 
law.  In  its  greatest  magnificence  we  yet 
demand  of  color  that  it  shall  give  us  an 
illusion  of  truth;  we  ask  of  it  that  its 

[173] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

variations  from  the  actual  shall  not  be 
perceived — indeed  that  they  shall  serve 
to  heighten  the  sense  of  reality.  To  paint 
trees  red  and  grass  purple  may  be  good 
heraldry,  but  such  fancies  have  no  other 
place  in  the  art  of  painting  than  that  of 
the  blue  boars  and  the  green  lions  that 
used  to  decorate  the  signs  of  way-side  inns. 
Nor  does  this  demand  for  a  certain  con- 
formity to  nature  in  itself  impose  any 
great  privation  upon  the  artist.  If  he 
needs  a  note  of  red,  for  the  completion  of 
his  color-harmony  or  the  expression  of  his 
emotion,  he  has  only  to  introduce  into  his 
picture  some  object  which  may  conceiva- 
bly be  red.  If  he  wants  a  green  or  blue  or 
purple  it  is  not  impossible  to  find  objects 
of  those  colors.  One  of  the  great  uses  of 
drapery  to  the  painter  is  that  it  allows  of 
the  introduction  of  any  desired  color  into 
the  general  harmony  of  colors.  But  this 
sort  of  conformity  to  nature  in  the  local 
color  of  objects  introduced,  while  it  may 

[174] 


LIGHT  AND  SHADE  AND  COLOR 

be  sufficient  for  painting  of  a  very  primi- 
tive kind,  is  only  the  beginning  of  the 
conformities  imposed  upon  painting  of 
a  more  fully  developed  order.  We  must 
have,  also,  some  sufficient  recognition  of 
the  laws  of  light,  some  knowledge  of  the 
relation  of  the  color  of  lights  to  the  color 
of  shadows.  We  must  have,  above  all,  a 
structure  of  light  and  dark,  or  of  light  and 
shade,  underlying  our  color  if  we  would 
prevent  our  color  from  being  merely 
chaotic  and  elevate  it  to  the  plane  of  true 
decoration.  As  every  color  has  its  value 
as  light  or  dark  there  will  necessarily  be 
some  arrangement  of  light  and  dark 
accompanying  any  scheme  of  colors,  but 
if  the  colors  are  selected  and  arranged 
for  their  quality  as  color  only,  leaving  their 
effect  as  light  and  dark  out  of  the  account, 
that  arrangement  will  be  hap-hazard  and 
therefore  bad.  It  is  necessary  to  weigh 
each  particle  of  color  for  its  value  as  well 
as  for  its  chromatic  effect,  whether  this 

[175] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

value  is  intrinsic  in  the  color  or  is  the 
effect  of  light  and  shade,  and  to  see  that 
the  whole  pattern  of  light  and  dark  is  as 
carefully  and  thoroughly  organized  as  the 
pattern  of  color.  It  is  for  this  reason  that 
the  term  "values"  has  been  so  extended 
as  to  cover  even  the  differences  of  light 
and  dark  caused  by  modelling,  and  it  is 
for  this  reason  that  the  study  of  values  has 
come  to  be  considered  of  such  vast  im- 
portance. The  thing  was  equally  impor- 
tant before  it  received  its  modern  name, 
and  it  remains  equally  important  whether 
the  scheme  of  light  and  dark  is  naturalistic 
or  decorative — whether  it  is  copied  from 
something  seen  or  invented  for  its  own 
beauty.  It  is  his  lack  of  a  feeling  for 
values — that  lack  of  a  sense  for  the 
amount  of  light  or  dark  included  in  his 
colors,  which  permits  him  to  make  a  sun- 
set cloud  darker  than  the  sky  it  rests  in — 
that  makes  the  color  of  Turner  so  spec- 
tacular and   unsatisfactory.   It   is,   even 

[J76] 


LIGHT  AND  SHADE  AND  COLOR 

more  than  the  lack  of  form,  the  lack  of 
a  sense  for  values  that  reduces  the  color 
of  Monticelli  to  a  sort  of  unmeaning 
gorgeousness. 

The  perfect  union  of  color  and  of  values 
— each  smallest  fragment  of  the  picture 
fulfilling  its  double  function  as  a  step  in 
the  scale  of  light  and  dark  and  as  a  note 
in  the  harmony  of  colors — produces  that 
great  unifying  influence  in  a  picture  which 
we  know  as  tone ;  and  I  know  of  no  more 
wonderful  instance  of  perfect  tone  than 
that  of  the  greatest  work  of  the  greatest 
of  artists,  who  has  yet  been  thought  of  as 
anything  but  a  painter  and  a  colorist 
— Michelangelo's  ceiling  of  the  Sistine 
Chapel.  Here  is  a  space  to  be  painted 
which  has  been  estimated  at  ten  thousand 
square  feet,  and  the  design  is  said  to  con- 
tain three  hundred  and  forty-three  figures ; 
yet  this  vast  scheme,  which  had,  more- 
over, from  the  conditions  of  fresco  paint- 
ing, to  be  executed  a  bit  at  a  time  and 

[  177] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

without  retouching,  is  held  together  from 
end  to  end  with  a  perfection  of  unity  as 
great  as  that  of  a  tiny  canvas  by  Terborch 
or  Metsu.  And  this  effect  is  produced  by 
most  subtle  and  beautiful  means.  The 
whole  central  portion  of  the  ceiling,  with 
its  stories  of  the  Creation  and  the  Fall  of 
Man,  is  based  upon  a  chord  of  gold  and 
violet.  The  lights,  which  are  mainly  the 
illuminated  masses  of  the  flesh,  are  of  a 
thousand  tints  of  grayish  yellow  or  pale 
orange;  the  darks,  which  are  made  by 
the  draperies,  are  reddish  violet;  the  gray 
blue  of  sky  forms  the  general  half-tone. 
Occasionally  there  is  a  blue  drapery,  but 
the  lights  of  it  are  pale  yellow,  the  local 
color  subsisting  only  in  the  shadows.  As 
you  descend  from  this  central  portion  to 
the  pendentives  and  the  lunettes  the  color 
grows  richer  and  fuller;  you  have  deep 
blues  and  greens  and  rich  reds,  but  always 
there  is  the  golden  light  modifying  the 
local  tones,  the  full-colored  shadow  look- 

[178] 


LIGHT  AND  SHADE  AND  COLOR 

ing  violaceous  by  reason  of  the  contrast. 
The  effect  of  the  whole  is  so  rich,  so 
harmonious,  so  right  in  the  relations  of  its 
parts  and  in  the  relation  of  the  whole  to 
its  surroundings,  so  perfectly  in  air  and 
so  lacking  in  heaviness,  that,  when  I  first 
saw  it,  I  forgot,  for  the  time,  the  stupen- 
dous design  and  marvellous  draughtsman- 
ship in  admiration  for  its  glory  of  color 
and  painter-like  mastery  of  tone.  Con- 
sidering the  overwhelming  difficulty  of 
the  task,  I  know  of  nothing  else  in  the 
world  comparable  to  this  as  a  display  of 
the  highest  powers  of  the  colorist. 

It  is  the  perfect  notation  of  values,  the 
union  of  the  exact  degree  of  light  or  dark 
with  the  exact  quality  of  warm  or  cold 
color  necessary  to  the  place  where  it  occurs, 
which  gives  the  sense  of  color  to  many  a 
picture  of  grayish  or  brownish  tone  in 
which  positive  colors  hardly  exist.  It  is 
this  which  makes  the  silvery  grays  of 
Correggio's   "Danae"   so  lovely  and  so 

[179] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

colorful  that  they  can  confront  even  the 
glowing  hues  of  Titian  without  fear.  It  is 
this  which  gives  us  the  illusion  of  color 
in  Rembrandt,  even  when  he  introduces 
nothing  in  his  pictures  but  variations  of 
golden  brown.  It  is  his  mastery  of  values, 
even  more  than  the  intrinsic  beauty  of  his 
cold  hues,  that  makes  Vermeer  so  pre- 
cious. It  is  mastery  of  values  that  makes 
Corot,  at  his  grayest,  a  master  of  color. 

But  it  is  not  only  such  gray  or  brown 
pictures  that  possess  tone — the  richest 
and  most  splendid  canvases  of  Titian  and 
Giorgione  possess  it  also,  and  in  equal 
measure,  and  they  possess  it  through  this 
same  double  service  of  each  particle  of 
pigment  as  a  part  of  a  comprehensive 
scheme  of  color,  and  as  a  part  of  an 
equally  comprehensive  scheme  of  light 
and  dark.  This  scheme  of  light  and  dark, 
which  is  the  framework  on  which  the 
color  is  woven,  is  in  their  works,  to  some 
extent,  conventional  and  decorative  rather 

[180] 


LIGHT  AND  SHADE  AND  COLOR 

than  strictly  naturalistic.  The  flesh,  for 
instance,  is  almost  always  lighter  than  the 
sky,  which  is  the  reverse  of  what  usually 
happens  in  the  open  air;  and  it  is  so  in 
order  to  give  the  human  figure  that  domi- 
nance in  the  pictorial  scheme  which  its  life 
and  its  importance  to  the  mind  give  it 
in  our  consciousness.  It  is  one  of  those 
cases,  and  there  are  many  such  in  art, 
where  a  convention  produces  the  effect  of 
truth  more  completely  than  would  an 
exact  compliance  with  the  actual.  But  if 
the  values  of  these  Venetian  masterpieces 
are  not  quite  nature's  values,  they  are 
none  the  less  profoundly  studied;  and  as 
every  good  Venetian  picture  has  a  linear 
design  that  will  retain  its  air  of  mag- 
nificent mastery  when  the  composition  is 
stripped  to  its  bare  bones  by  old-fashioned 
wood-engraving,  so  it  has  a  muscular 
structure  of  light  and  dark  that  is  still  con- 
summate when  photography  has  robbed 
it  of  its  colors.  Put  some  of   the   later 

[181] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

pictures  of  Turner  and  most  of  the  mod- 
ern impressionistic  works  to  the  same 
test,  and  you  will  have  little  or  nothing 
left.  They  have  no  blood  and  bone  under 
the  skin  of  surface  beauty — their  irides- 
cence is  that  of  a  blown  bladder. 

Such  grasp  and  knowledge  of  both  light 
and  shade  and  color  as  is  necessary  to  the 
attainment  of  harmony  by  the  way  of  true 
tone  is  difficult  of  acquisition,  and  it  is 
not  to  be  wondered  at,  human  nature 
being  what  it  is,  that  various  short  cuts  to 
harmony  have  been  attempted  and  various 
forms  of  false  or  artificial  tone  invented. 
It  was  the  desire  to  attain  to  an  artificial 
harmony,  and  to  something  that  might 
answer  for  tone,  without  the  necessity 
of  too  much  thought  or  labor,  that  led 
to  the  once  well-nigh  universal  use  of 
bitumen.  It  used  to  be  spread  over  the 
whole  surface  to  be  painted  upon,  and 
painted  into  while  it  was  wet,  so  that  it 
mixed  itself  in  some  degree  with  all  the 

[182] 


> 

Q 


o 

X 


o 

— 


LIGHT  AND  SHADE  AND  COLOR 

colors  on  the  canvas,  acting  as  a  sort  of 
mechanical  harmonizer  and  taking  the 
place  of  knowledge  in  preventing  false 
contrasts  and  crudity.  This  use  of  bitu- 
men has  been  frequently  lamented  be- 
cause of  its  impermanence — because  it 
led  to  blackening  and  cracking  and,  in 
some  cases,  almost  to  the  sliding  off  the 
canvas  of  the  picture  painted  upon  it.  It 
seems  to  me  truly  lamentable  because  it 
was  false  art  in  the  first  place,  and  inevi- 
tably vitiated  the  color  of  the  artists  who 
indulged  in  it.  It  was  easy — fatally  easy — 
and  art  made  easy  is  always  art  made  bad. 
The  day  of  bitumen  has  passed — one  of 
the  last  artists  to  base  his  work  upon  it 
was  Munkacsy,  whose  pictures  are  fast 
blackening  into  invisibility  upon  the  walls 
of  our  museums — and  we  might  look 
upon  our  escape  from  it  with  some  com- 
placency were  it  not  for  the  fact  that  other 
means  of  mechanical  harmonizing  are 
still  employed.  I  do  not  know  whether 

[183] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

there  are  still  any  papers  published  of  the 
sort  which  used,  not  so  long  ago,  to  give 
instructions  to  amateurs  whereby  they 
might  produce  works  of  art  without  any 
knowledge  of  nature.  They  used  to  con- 
tain recipes  something  like  this:  for  the 
flesh  use  light  red,  yellow  ochre  and  white 
with — here  was  the  invariable  part — with 
"a  little  ivory  black  to  give  it  tone."  It 
sounds  naive  enough,  put  in  that  simple 
way,  and  yet  that  recipe  of  "a  little  ivory 
black"  as  a  "universal  harmonizer"  was 
one  of  the  things  on  which  no  less  a  per- 
son than  James  McNeill  Whistler  relied 
for  the  production  of  his  delicate  sym- 
phonies. In  the  hands  of  a  hundred  imita- 
tors and  followers  it  has  become  almost 
the  only  thing  relied  on,  and  instead  of  a 
little  ivory  black  it  has  become  a  good 
deal. 
Take  another  instance.  In  the  old  bitu- 
minous days  all  shadows  were  brown, 
and  the  acceptance  of  that  rule  saved  a 
[184] 


LIGHT  AND  SHADE  AND  COLOR 

vast  deal  of  trouble.  Then  the  impression- 
ists discovered  that  some  shadows  are 
blue.  The  logical  result  should  have  been 
a  new  impulse  toward  the  thorough  study 
of  the  real  color  of  shadows.  The  actual 
result,  in  many  cases,  has  been  merely 
to  install  blue  instead  of  brown,  as  a 
thought-saver  and  time-saver.  "All  shad- 
ows are  blue,"  says  the  young  painter 
who  thinks  himself  modern,  and  troubles 
no  more  about  them,  but  paints  them  blue 
where  they  would,  in  nature,  be  brown  or 
orange  or  anything  but  blue.  As  a  "uni- 
versal harmonizer,"  if  we  are  to  have  such 
a  thing,  I  confess  to  preferring  bitumen, 
for  the  warm  tones  of  those  days  were 
at  least  more  agreeable  to  the  eye  than 
the  icy  tones  of  these. 

Finally,  there  is  the  harmony  by  attenua- 
tion, the  use  of  pale  and  faded  colors,  the 
reign  of  universal  half-tone,  inaugurated 
by  Puvis  de  Chavannes.  As  he  first  used 
it,  in  the  decoration  of  cold,  gray  build- 

[185] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

ings,  it  was  admirably  suited  to  its  pur- 
pose, and  his  dead  tones  seemed  a  part  of 
the  stone  and  plaster  that  surrounded 
them.  In  other  situations  it  was  not  so 
successful,  even  where  he  used  it  himself 
— his  decorations  in  the  Boston  Public 
Library  never  seem  to  me  to  mate  with  the 
yellow  marble  of  that  splendid  interior — 
and  in  the  hands  of  others  it  became  only 
one  more  case  of  the  universal  harmonizer. 
This  time  it  was  a  little,  or  a  good  deal, 
of  white  "to  give  it  tone."  As  confession  is 
good  for  the  soul,  I  may  admit  that  the 
influence  of  Puvis  was  so  dominant,  when 
I  began  to  have  decorative  commissions 
to  fill,  that  it  carried  me  away,  for  a  time, 
into  this  harmonization  by  paleness.  I 
hope  I  have  learned  something  since  those 
days,  and  if  I  had  my  two  lunettes  in  the 
Library  of  Congress  to  paint  again  the 
result,  whether  better  or  worse,  would  be 
something  very  different  from  the  ghosts 
of  paintings  I  actually  placed  there. 

[186] 


LIGHT  AND  SHADE  AND  COLOR 

All  of  these  methods  are  really  confes- 
sions of  weakness — they  are  efforts  to 
avoid  difficulties  instead  of  conquering 
them.  The  ideal  is  to  paint  with  the  full 
palette  and,  on  occasion,  with  the  full 
strength  of  the  palette,  and  to  harmonize 
the  result  by  sheer  knowledge :  knowledge 
of  the  laws  of  light  and  shade;  knowledge 
of  the  harmonies  and  contrasts  of  colors; 
knowledge  of  the  relations  of  the  color 
of  light  to  the  color  of  shadow.  Nothing 
but  long  study  will  give  a  painter  this 
knowledge.  The  laws  of  color  cannot  be 
written  in  any  form  precise  enough  to  help 
him  greatly.  A  competent  master,  if  there 
were  such,  might  greatly  shorten  the  road 
for  him  by  practical  advice  and  demon- 
stration, but  even  he  could  only  start  the 
student  upon  the  right  road.  A  natural 
gift  is  indispensable  to  begin  with,  but  that 
will  carry  one  no  farther  in  color  than  it 
would  in  drawing.  Years  of  work,  years  of 
discipline,  years  of  observation  of  art  and 

[187] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

of  nature — that  is  the  only  recipe.  The 
only  universal  harmonizer  is  "brains,  sir." 
While  it  is  true  that  good  color  is  based 
upon  a  scheme  of  light  and  dark  or  light 
and  shadow,  and  that  true  tone  is  only  to 
be  attained  by  a  perfect  adjustment  of 
color  to  values,  yet  in  proportion  as  color 
is  the  dominant  preoccupation  of  the 
artist  it  manifests  a  tendency  to  assume 
the  superior  position  and  to  relegate  light 
and  shade  to  the  inferior  place.  It  tends 
to  revert  toward  the  primitive  condition, 
in  which  each  space  of  color  kept  its  own 
quality  throughout,  unsullied  by  shadows ; 
and  while  it  admits  and  relies  upon  light 
and  shade  it  insists  that  this  element  shall 
be  so  subordinated  that  it  shall  never  dis- 
guise the  quality  of  a  given  color  as  color. 
However  rich  the  variations  within  their 
borders,  red  must  yet  be  red,  from  one  end 
to  the  other,  and  blue,  blue;  and  if  there 
are  a  dozen  different  reds,  scarlet  and 
crimson  and  rose  will  be  scarlet  and  crim- 

[188] 


Plate  26. — " L'Enlevement  de  Psyche,"  by  Prudhon. 

In  the  Louvre. 


LIGHT  AND  SHADE  AND  COLOR 

son  and  rose  through  each  variation  of 
shadow  and  half-tone  and  high  light  and 
no  one  will  be  confusable  with  any  other. 
This  persistence  of  the  local  color  through 
all  conditions  of  light  or  shadow  or  reflec- 
tion is  a  quality  of  all  true  colorists,  but 
it  is  perhaps  most  astonishing  in  the  work 
of  Veronese  and  is  one  of  the  things  that 
make  him,  on  the  whole,  the  most  accom- 
plished painter  that  ever  lived.  He  can 
do  anything  with  color  or  with  light  and 
shade,  can  throw  whole  figures  into  cast 
shadow,  can  reverberate  reflections  from 
one  color  to  another,  can  strike  a  brilliant 
golden  high  light  onto  a  mantle  of  violet 
silk ;  yet  the  true  local  color  of  each  object 
is  never  in  doubt.  From  the  deepest  shad- 
ow to  the  highest  light  it  preserves  its 
identity  and  is  immediately  distinguish- 
able from  every  other  color  near  it.  What 
the  primitives  achieved  by  the  omission 
of  modulation  he  achieves  with  the  fullest 
modulation. 

[189] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

In  Veronese,  also,  you  will  find  the  best 
example  of  another  habit  of  the  great 
colorists  which  connects  their  practice 
with  that  of  the  primitives.  In  primitive 
painting  a  given  color  was  shaded,  in  so 
far  as  it  was  shaded  at  all,  with  more  of 
the  same  color,  a  blue  drapery  being 
simply  a  little  deeper  blue  in  the  shadows 
than  in  the  lights,  and  this  method  pro- 
duced a  crystalline  purity  of  tint  hard  to 
attain  in  any  other  manner.  As  chiaro- 
scuro began  to  be  studied  this  simple 
manner  was  abandoned,  shadows  became 
darker  and  heavier,  and  gradually  ab- 
sorbed all  local  colors,  leaving  them  visible 
only  in  the  lights.  But  the  colorists  found 
that  all  those  things  in  nature  which  were 
loveliest  in  color  were  colored  in  the 
shadow  rather  than  in  the  light.  Look  into 
a  rose  and  see  how  the  color,  which  is  so 
faint  as  to  be  almost  imperceptible  on  the 
edges  of  the  outer  petals,  grows  deeper 
and  richer  as  you  dive  into  its  heart.  Look 

[190] 


LIGHT  AND   SHADE  AND  COLOR 

at  the  sky,  on  a  clear  day,  and  see  how 
it  is  gradated  from  the  pale  horizon  into 
a  pure  and  ever  purer  blue  as  you  ap- 
proach the  zenith.  Look  at  a  ruby  and  see 
how  from  the  fiery  high  light  it  darkles 
into  fuller  and  fuller  red.  This  is  the  way 
that  nature  produces  beautiful  color,  and 
this  is  the  only  way  man  has  succeeded  in 
producing  it.  The  painter  must  know 
enough  to  modify  this  condition  by  such 
graying  of  cast  shadows,  such  modula- 
tions of  half-tones,  as  shall  maintain  the 
illusion  of  natural  effect,  but  if  he  would 
give  all  the  pleasure  by  his  color  that 
color  is  capable  of  giving  he  must,  in  the 
main,  base  his  procedure  on  that  of  the 
primitives,  coloring  his  shadows  and  at- 
tenuating his  lights  rather  than  coloring 
his  lights  and  graying  his  shadows. 

If  the  purity  and  beauty  of  individual 
hue  is  largely  dependent  on  the  subordina- 
tion of  light  and  shade  and  on  this  intensi- 
fication of  color  in  the  shadow,  it  is  also 

[191] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

largely  dependent  on  the  technical  method 
of  painting.  The  most  striking  proof  of 
this  is  found  in  comparing  the  coloring 
of  our  painters  in  water-color  with  that  of 
our  painters  in  oil.  On  going  into  an  ex- 
hibition of  water  colors  the  first  impression 
will  be  that  the  painters,  good  and  bad, 
are  all  working  in  color.  On  going  into  an 
exhibition  of  oils  the  first  impression  is 
apt  to  be  that  every  one  is  painting  in  mud 
or  in  chalk.  It  is  not  a  question  of  the 
ability  of  the  painters.  Some  of  the  water 
color  painters  are  certain  to  be  mediocre 
artists,  and  some  of  the  oil  painters  are 
sure  to  be  men  of  very  great  talent;  yet  in 
this  one  matter  of  beautiful  and  pure  color 
the  water  colorists  will  maintain  their  ad- 
vantage. What  is  even  more  conclusive, 
you  will  find  the  same  man  working  in 
both  mediums  and  producing  clear  and 
lovely  results  in  the  one  and  heavy  opac- 
ity in  the  other.  The  contrast  is  no  longer 
so  striking  as  it  used  to  be,  because,  alas, 

[192] 


LIGHT  AND  SHADE  AND  COLOR 

our  water  color  painters  are  more  and 
more  abandoning  the  unique  advantage 
of  their  material  and  imitating  the  muddi- 
ness  of  modern  oil  painting,  but  the  con- 
trast is  still  there. 

In  one  of  his  lectures  to  the  students 
of  the  Royal  Academy,  some  years  ago, 
Mr.  George  Clausen  noticed  this  superior 
beauty  of  water  color,  and  the  reason  for 
it,  saying:  "if  you  put  a  simple  wash  of 
color  on  paper  it  is  always  beautiful,  be- 
cause of  its  transparency."  But  he  failed 
to  draw  what  seems  the  natural  conclu- 
sion from  it.  After  some  account  of  the 
ways  in  which  the  older  painters  secured 
an  equivalent  effect  in  oils,  he  goes  on: 
"But  these  paths  are  outside  the  track 
of  most  artists  to-day  ...  we  are  more 
literal  ...  we  feel  that  it  may  be  possible 
to  paint  with  our  first  and  main  reference 
to  nature  as  we  see  it  around  us  and  .  .  . 
to  claim  still  that  beauty  of  color  may  be 
found  also  in  the  plain  aspect  of  visible 

[193] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

things."  The  real  meaning  of  which  is, 
that  while  splendid  or  lovely  color  has 
been  secured  in  oil  painting  in  the  past 
and  is  secured  in  water  color  to-day,  we 
must  still  go  on  muddling  and  missing  it. 
Why  must  we?  Having  once  admitted 
that  a  great  part  of  the  quality  of  fine 
color  is  dependent  on  transparency,  why 
should  we  not  go  back  to  some  one  of  the 
methods  of  the  older  painters  by  which 
transparency  was  secured? 
There  are  several  such  methods  which 
will  call  for  consideration  and  be  dis- 
cussed, presently,  in  some  detail.  They  are 
being  studied,  here  and  there,  in  this  coun- 
try, as  are  all  the  other  problems  of  color. 
The  late  Louis  Loeb  was  studying  the  use 
of  glazes  over  a  monochromatic  founda- 
tion, and  making  great  progress  in  the 
direction  of  rich  and  full  color  at  the  time 
of  his  death.  A  number  of  other  American 
painters  are  pursuing  similar  investiga- 
tions, and  some  of  those  that  paint  di- 

[194] 


c 


J3 


3 

o 
U 


c 


LIGHT  AND  SHADE  AND  COLOR 

rectly,  and  without  particular  method,  are 
constantly  increasing  the  force  and  fulness 
of  their  palettes.  They  are  still  a  small 
minority,  but  they  are  having  their  effect, 
and  the  walls  of  our  exhibitions  are  yearly 
gaining  in  richness  of  color.  I  hope  and 
believe  that  when  the  American  school  of 
painting  is  fully  developed  it  will  prove  to 
be  a  school  of  colorists. 


[195] 


VI 
TECHNIQUE 

Technique — I  dislike  the  word  but  can 
find  no  precise  equivalent  for  it — is  that 
element  of  the  art  of  painting  which 
has  the  least  reliance  upon  the  observa- 
tion of  nature.  The  subject  of  a  picture 
may  be  some  place  or  event  actually  seen 
by  the  artist;  the  design  may  be  suggested 
by  something  in  nature  or  may  even  be 
wholly  copied  from  some  felicitous  nat- 
ural arrangement;  the  drawing,  the  light 
and  shade,  the  coloring,  however  modified 
by  the  artistic  intention,  must  be  more  or 
less  imitative  or  representative.  Nature 
may  decide  for  the  artist  what  he  shall 
paint,  but  she  has  no  voice  in  determining 
how  he  shall  paint  it.  The  means  at  the 
artist's  disposal,  the  tools  he  uses  and  his 

[196] 


TECHNIQUE 

methods  of  employing  them,  are  decided 
by  the  history  and  traditions  of  his  art. 
On  the  purely  technical  side  a  piece  of 
painting  is  good  or  bad  as  any  other  piece 
of  craftsmanship  is  good  or  bad,  accord- 
ing as  it  employs  its  tools  and  materials 
to  the  best  advantage  and  for  the  intrin- 
sic beauty  of  the  material  result,  making 
a  skin  of  oil  paint  as  beautiful  as  it  can 
be  made. 

But  modern  art  has  almost  entirely  lost 
the  feeling  for  beautiful  workmanship,  as 
well  as  the  knowledge  of  how  to  produce 
it.  Of  all  the  traditions  of  painting  which 
were  destroyed  by  the  pseudo- classic 
revolution  the  technical  tradition  was  the 
most  thoroughly  annihilated;  and  the 
modern  artist  has  had  to  experiment  and 
guess  in  the  effort  to  rediscover  the  ad- 
mirable methods  of  the  older  masters, 
or  to  muddle  through  without  any  method 
at  all,  relying  upon  the  closeness  of  his 
observation  of  nature  to  take  the  place 

[197] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

of  any  mastery  of  his  materials.  We  have 
even  so  far  forgotten  what  real  technical 
beauty  is,  that  if  any  man  paints  with  a 
big  brush  and  a  certain  swagger  of  hand- 
ling we  hail  him,  at  once,  as  a  master  of 
technique,  though  every  particle  of  his 
color  may  be  muddy  and  heavy,  though 
his  rendering  of  form  may  be  cursory  and 
insufficient,  though  his  canvases  be  un- 
pleasant in  their  surface,  though  his  pict- 
ures, from  end  to  end,  are  but  rough 
approximations  to  anything  the  painters 
of  the  past  would  have  thought  satis- 
factory. A  parade  of  what  we  call  "direct- 
ness" and  "frankness,"  and  a  "looseness" 
often  not  to  be  distinguished  from  slack- 
ness, have  come  to  be  almost  the  only  tech- 
nical qualities  we  admire. 

This  modern  method  of  direct  painting 
which  has  become  wellnigh  universal — 
a  method  in  which  everything,  design, 
drawing,  light  and  shade  and  color,  is 
produced  at  once  and  with  the  fewest  pos- 

[198] 


TECHNIQUE 

sible  brush  strokes — implies  the  assump- 
tion of  a  mastery  little  less  than  colossal. 
It  is  based,  originally,  upon  the  practice 
of  two  real  masters,  Velazquez  and  Frans 
Hals,  but,  it  seems  to  me,  upon  a  mis- 
reading of  their  work.  Hals,  at  times, 
comes  nearer  to  justifying  modern  prac- 
tice than  does  Velazquez.  He  has  the 
reputation  of  having  been  a  hard  drinker 
and  there  are  pictures  of  his  that  look  al- 
most as  if  they  might  have  been  painted 
in  a  drunken  frenzy,  so  meaningless 
and  disorganized  are  his  slashing  brush 
strokes.  There  are  also  works  painted 
late  in  life  when,  apparently,  he  had  lost 
his  skill  of  hand  and  almost  his  sureness 
of  eye,  which  are  fumbling  and  nearly 
formless,  and  which  maintain  their  inter- 
est because  of  the  vast  acquired  knowl- 
edge that  the  old  man  could  not  lose. 
But  in  the  execution  of  Hals  at  his  best, 
it  is  not  his  freedom  that  is  most  remark- 
able,   it   is   his   extraordinary   precision. 

[199] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

Every  touch  is  exactly  right  in  shape  and 
position,  in  value  and  in  color,  to  render 
with  utmost  accuracy  the  object  repre- 
sented, whether  it  be  a  human  head  or  a 
bit  of  still-life.  That  these  touches  appear 
to  have  been  placed  on  the  canvas  at  high 
speed  increases  the  wonder,  but  the  won- 
der itself  is  in  their  certainty.  If  I  had  a 
pupil  who  was  bitten  with  the  mania  of 
looseness,  and  was  trying  to  run  before 
he  could  walk,  I  should  like  to  place  him 
before  one  of  the  inimitable  shooting- 
guild  pictures  at  Haarlaem  and  bid  him 
look  at  the  character  of  the  heads  and 
hands,  at  the  clear  distinction  of  bony  and 
fleshy  planes,  at  the  consummate  natu- 
ralistic draughtsmanship ;  and  I  should  say 
to  him:  "When  you  can  draw  like  that 
we  will  talk  of  painting."  I  should  ask 
him  to  observe  the  rendering  of  the  sword 
hilts  and  halberds,  of  the  dishes  and 
glasses,  of  the  pattern  on  a  cut-velvet 
doublet,  perfect  in  its  repetition  through 

[200] 


~-Zi£fZpm& 


Plate  28. — "Peasant  with  Wheelbarrow,"  from  the  etching  by  Millet. 


TECHNIQUE 

every  inch  of  surface,  absolute  in  its  per- 
spective as  it  runs  in  and  out  among  the 
folds ;  and  I  should  say  to  him :  "when  you 
can  compass  that  precision,  by  any  means, 
you  may  begin  to  attempt  it  with  free 
touches."  Then  I  should  like  to  show  him 
certain  little  panels  by  the  same  master, 
a  few  inches  square,  and  make  him  see 
the  beautiful,  flowing,  translucent  pigment 
and  ask  him  to  produce  one  square  inch 
of  such  a  surface  before  he  went  further. 
Finally,  I  should  take  him  to  see  that  won- 
derful portrait  of  an  old  lady,  belonging 
to  Mr.  Morgan,  in  the  Metropolitan  Mu- 
seum and  ask  him  to  try  to  copy  the  inde- 
cipherable modelling  of  the  head;  to  try 
to  paint  the  ruff  with  its  perfect  simplicity 
and  the  entire  regularity  of  its  plaitings,  in 
their  proper  foreshortenings,  as  they  turn 
into  the  shadow;  to  make  any  approach 
to  the  quiet  unity  of  light  and  color, 
the  impeccable  tone  of  the  whole  canvas. 
I  think  that,  after  a  few  such  lessons,  he 

[201  ] 


THE   CLASSIC   POINT  OF  VIEW 

would  be  less  content  with  what  passes 
for  "technique''  to-day. 
As  for  Velazquez,  his  coolness  and  lucid- 
ity, his  absolute  freedom  from  ostentation 
or  any  display  of  virtuosity,  his  serious- 
ness and  his  completeness  are  among  his 
most  obvious  characteristics.  Fortunately, 
in  his  case,  we  have  his  early  work  and 
can  be  sure — where,  in  the  case  of  Hals, 
we  can  only  guess — by  what  steps  he  at- 
tained his  ultimate  mastery.  There  are 
several  of  his  quite  early  pictures  in  exist- 
ence, little  more  than  still-life  studies,  ex- 
ercises in  the  representation  of  natural 
facts  and  appearances.  They  are  rather 
hard,  rather  dull  and  commonplace, 
closely  studied  and  thoroughly  finished, 
the  work  of  a  good  honest  sudent,  no 
more.  Then  we  have  the  early  portraits, 
simple  in  arrangement,  quiet,  almost 
timid  in  execution,  but  fine  in  character 
and  beautiful  in  tone.  It  is  only  little  by 
little  that  he  reaches  the  superb  freedom 

[202] 


TECHNIQUE 

of  the  accomplished  master.  I  should  say 
to  my  hypothetical  pupil:  "begin  where 
Velazquez  began;  take  the  steps  he  took; 
and,  if  you  are  able,  we  shall  be  glad 
to  have  vou  leave  off  where  he  left  off." 

But  even  in  the  hands  of  these  masters 
the  "direct  method"  of  painting  had  its 
drawbacks  as  well  as  its  virtues — was 
suited  to  some  purposes  and  not  to  others. 
No  man  is  great  enough  to  carry  on  all  the 
elements  of  painting  at  the  same  time  and 
achieve  equal  and  entire  success  in  all.  If 
design  and  drawing  and  color  are  to  be 
attained  with  the  one  set  of  brush  strokes, 
and  without  separate  consideration,  some 
or  all  of  these  elements  will  suffer.  Neither 
Velazquez  nor  Hals  was  pre-eminently  a 
designer;  neither  was,  in  the  full  sense,  a 
colorist.  Both  were  admirable  draughts- 
men as  far  as  the  correct  placing  and  shap- 
ing of  things  is  concerned,  but  neither  of 
them  had  any  conception  of  that  higher 
drawing  which  is  an  intellectual  art.  Velaz- 

[203] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

quez  was  the  greater  man  of  the  two  and 
comes  nearer  to  attaining  the  great  quali- 
ties of  other  schools.  His  "Surrender  of 
Breda"  is  a  nearly  perfect  composition  for 
its  purpose,  but  he  could  not  succeed  in 
another  kind  of  art.  His  "Coronation  of 
the  Virgin,"  placed  beside  even  a  second- 
rate  picture  of  the  great  Italian  period,  is 
commonplace  both  in  the  design  and  in 
the  types  and  the  manner  of  drawing. 
Hals  hardly  composed  at  all  and  his  big 
portrait  groups  are  put  together  anyhow. 
Velazquez,  while  he  could  not  attain  to 
the  full  beauty  and  glory  of  color,  was  a 
master  of  tone  and  even  his  largest  works 
are  admirably  harmonized.  Hals  was 
capable  of  great  beauty  of  color  in  pas- 
sages, but  his  larger  pictures  are  seldom 
quite  perfectly  in  keeping.  In  his  later 
days  he  abandoned  color  almost  alto- 
gether and  relied  entirely  upon  the  just- 
ness of  his  values  to  give  effect  to  nearly 
monochromatic  canvases.  In  a  word,  their 

[204] 


TECHNIQUE 

methods  were  suited  only  to  the  purposes 
of  an  almost  purely  naturalistic  art — an 
art  occupying  itself  with  the  rendering  of 
objects  and  effects  immediately  before  the 
eye.  And  even  so,  there  is  one  thing  that 
to  my  mind,  they  could  never  perfectly 
render — -the  opaque  color  and  the  flowing 
or  slashing  stroke  can  never  give  quite  the 
look  of  the  human  body,  with  its  subtle 
modelling,  its  broad  surfaces,  its  glowing 
lights  and  shadows,  its  peculiar  irradia- 
tion and  inner  light.  Correggio  and  Titian 
could  render  these  qualities  of  flesh,  not 
Velazquez  or  Hals. 

It  is,  of  course,  precisely  because  Velaz- 
quez and  Hals  were  so  entirely  naturalistic 
in  temper  that  their  methods  have  so  in- 
fluenced our  naturalistic  age.  To  a  genera- 
tion almost  entirely  absorbed  in  the  effort 
to  render  the  thing  seen,  their  example 
could  hardly  fail  to  be  decisive.  But  the 
example  has  been  a  very  dangerous  one. 
Even    our   most   brilliant   virtuosi   have 

[205] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

never  been  able  to  combine  the  brilliancy 
of  these  masters  with  their  solidity  and 
sanity.  In  the  hands  of  the  rank  and  file 
of  modern  painters  the  attempt  has  led 
to  lamentable  results.  The  obsession  of 
the  big  brush  has  led  to  the  attempt  to 
use  it  where  a  smaller  one  was  obviously 
called  for,  to  the  omission  of  all  forms  less 
than  an  inch  wide,  and  the  reduction  of 
ears  to  jug  handles  and  of  the  human  face 
to  a  diagram.  The  desire  of  freedom  and 
looseness  has  led  to  the  stroke  which  is 
slashing  whether  it  is  right  or  wrong  and 
which,  in  the  worst  examples,  comes  to 
represent  nothing  but  so  much  paint.  The 
attempt  to  do  everything  at  once  leads  to 
doing  nothing  well.  We  paint  at  the  thing 
rather  than  paint  it,  fail  and  repaint,  often 
without  waiting  for  the  first  painting  to 
dry,  make  alterations,  put  darks  where 
lights  were  or  lights  where  darks  have 
been,  or  lay  one  coat  of  practically  the 
same  color  over  another.  Where  dark  goes 

[206] 


c 
c 

> 

cS 

U 


- 


a 


TECHNIQUE 

over  light  the  paint  cracks.  Where  light 
goes  over  dark  it  becomes  translucent, 
with  time,  and  the  dark  becomes  visible. 
Where  the  same  color  is  twice  laid  the  re- 
sult is  heaviness  and  muddiness.  In  our 
effort  at  what  we  mistakenly  call  technique 
we  have  forever  lost  all  true  technical 
beauty. 

I  do  not  think  this  is  an  over-strong  state- 
ment of  the  faults  of  technical  method  in 
the  average  modern  portrait  or  figure 
painting.  Among  the  landscape  painters, 
especially,  though  some  figure  painters 
practise  it  also,  there  is  another  kind  of 
technique  which  seems  to  have  come  to 
us,  directly,  from  the  practice  of  Dupre, 
but  of  which  the  ultimate  ancestor  is 
Rembrandt — the  technique  of  heavily 
loaded  pigment  and  of  extreme  rugosity 
of  surface.  Rembrandt  is  the  first  master 
who  ever  used  anything  that  we  should 
now  call  heavy  loading  of  paint,  for  the 
richest  surfaces  of  the  Venetians  were  only 

[207] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

heavy  enough  for  solidity.  Rembrandt 
himself  had  an  admirable  thin  technique 
which  he  applied  when  he  was  merely 
painting  what  he  saw — the  lucidity  and 
beauty  of  surface  in  such  a  canvas  as  "The 
Gilder"  is  inimitable — and  even  in  such 
a  work  as  the  wonderful  "Orphan,"  in 
the  Art  Institute  of  Chicago,  the  loading 
is  within  bounds  and  the  surface  is  all  of 
a  piece.  But  he  had  a  love  for  glitter, 
which  lead  to  heavily  projecting  high 
lights,  and  he  needed  rough  surfaces  to 
take  his  glazes.  As  he  grew  older  and 
more  absorbed  in  his  dreams  his  handling: 
grew  rougher  and  less  precise  and  his 
loading  is  pushed  to  greater  and  greater 
extremes.  In  some  of  his  late  work,  mar- 
vellous as  it  is  in  imaginative  power,  full 
as  it  is  of  humanity  and  of  sympathy,  I 
must  confess  that  the  actual  painting  is, 
to  me,  extremely  disagreeable. 

Just  what  Dupre  gained  by  his  heavy 
loading  it  is  difficult  to  see.  In  comparison 

[208] 


TECHNIQUE 

with  the  beautiful  fluid  touch  of  Corot  or 
the  jewel  work  of  Rousseau  his  pictures 
reek  of  paint.  But  he  is  far  outdone  by 
some  of  our  moderns,  and  we  have  land- 
scapes that  look  like  a  bit  of  studio  wall 
covered  with  the  palette-scrapings  of  a 
generation  of  art  students,  and  arms  and 
legs  built  out  into  high  relief  but  looking 
none  the  rounder  for  it — things  in  which 
the  pigment,  instead  of  being  made  into  a 
lovely  surface,  is  thrown  at  us  in  raw  and 
hideous  masses. 

Finally,  we  have  a  kind  of  technique 
invented  in  our  own  day — the  hatching 
and  dotting  of  impressionism.  It  was 
created  for  a  special  purpose,  the  render- 
ing of  the  vibration  of  brilliant  light,  and 
so  far  as  it  answers  its  purpose  and  is 
applied  to  subjects  appropriate  for  the 
display  of  light  for  its  own  sake,  it  is 
justified.  But  the  last  time  I  was  in  the 
impressionist  room  of  the  Luxembourg 
Gallery  it  struck  me  not  only  that  the 

[209] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

pictures  there  were  spotty  and  rough,  the 
surface  unpleasant  to  look  at  as  a  sur- 
face, but  that  they  did  not  even  give  any 
illusion  of  light.  They  were  pale,  not 
luminous,  and  their  rough  surfaces  had 
caught  and  held  the  dust.  They  were 
dingy  and  forlorn;  their  glory  had  de- 
parted. And  across  the  Seine,  in  the  gal- 
leries of  the  Louvre,  were  pictures  four 
hundred  years  old  that  seemed  only  the 
richer  and  more  glowing  for  the  centuries 
that  had  passed  over  them,  and  pictures 
older  still  that  looked  as  fresh  and  brilliant 
as  if  just  painted. 
Unfortunately,  we  know  too  little  of  the 
methods  of  the  past  to  be  able  to  discuss, 
with  any  profit,  that  soundness  of  work- 
manship which  has  kept  the  panels  of 
Van  Eyck  fresher  than  almost  anything 
which  has  been  produced  since.  We  can 
admire  the  clear  beauty  of  the  color,  the 
exquisite  surface,  the  incredible  elabora- 
tion of  detail  which  is  yet  consistent  with 

[210  1 


TECHNIQUE 

a  large  general  effect — we  can  be  sure  that 
the  reputed  inventor  of  oil  painting  knew 
more  about  the  proper  use  of  his  materials 
than  any  of  his  successors — but  we  do 
not  know  what  his  materials  were  nor 
how  he  used  them.  And  we  know  little 
more  about  the  wonderful  craftsmanship 
of  the  earlier  Italian  painters.  We  can 
see  that  there  is  a  marvellous  skill  of  hand 
in  the  pure,  fair  modelling  and  delicate 
drawing  of  Angelico ;  a  miracle  of  training 
in  the  incisive  goldsmith- work  of  Man- 
tegna;  but  we  have  no  notion  of  how  we 
should  go  to  work  to  imitate  them. 

In  all  good  technical  methods  of  painting 
there  are  three  things  aimed  at:  soundness 
and  permanence  of  workmanship ;  beauty 
of  surface;  purity  and  richness  of  color. 
Probably  the  perfection  of  primitive  tech- 
nique is  forever  unrecoverable,  and  in  the 
matter  of  a  sound  and  permanent  manner 
of  painting  we  can  go  no  farther  than  to 
avoid  certain  things.  We  can  refuse  to  use 

[211] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

certain  pigments  that  are  notoriously 
fugitive;  we  can  avoid  mixing  certain 
colors  that  chemically  affect  each  other; 
we  can  refrain  from  repainting  until  the 
under  coat  of  paint  is  thoroughly  dry. 
And  we  can  be  sure  that,  other  things 
being  equal,  the  less  paint  we  have  put 
upon  the  canvas  the  less  likelihood  there 
is  of  disastrous  alterations.  But  we  can 
profitably  study  the  aesthetic  quality  of 
the  workmanship  of  various  masters  and 
of  various  schools,  trying  to  understand 
what  they  thought  beautiful  in  surface 
and  how  they  secured  fulness  of  color, 
that  we  may  secure  as  much  of  these 
things  as  possible  in  our  own  work. 
And,  first,  let  us  consider  that  bugbear 
of  the  modern  painter — hardness.  To  say 
that  a  picture  is  hard  is  of  itself  sufficient 
condemnation  in  our  eyes,  yet  nothing 
seems  more  certain  than  that  hardness 
was,  with  some  of  the  masters,  a  virtue 
deliberately  sought  for.  Mantegna's  draw- 
[21*1 


Plate  30. — "The  Song  of  the  Shepherd,"  by  Puvis  de  Cha valines. 

Property  of  the  Metropolitan  Museum  of  Art. 


TECHNIQUE 

ings,  made  with  a  pen,  are  much  less  pre-* 
cise,  much  less  definite,  than  the  paintings 
he  made  from  them.  He  consciously  strove 
for  a  hardness  with  his  brush  which  his 
pen  would  not  give  him.  And,  indeed, 
if  there  is  a  hardness  which  is  not  beauti- 
ful it  is  usually  because  it  is  not  hard 
enough.  There  is  little  dignity  in  the  hard- 
ness of  wood  or  the  hardness  of  leather 
— there  is  much  in  the  hardness  of  bronze 
or  the  hardness  of  crystal.  Only  if  one  is 
to  cast  things  in  bronze  or  carve  them  in 
basalt,  they  should  be  worthy  the  imper- 
ishable material.  The  hardness  of  Hol- 
bein's wonderful  enamel  is  an  essential 
and  necessary  part  of  its  beauty.  The 
gem-like  perfection  of  line  and  of  com- 
position in  Ingres's  portraits  calls  for  a 
gem-like  hardness  of  execution.  If  these 
things  were  less  hard  they  could  not  seem 
so  permanent — so  immortal.  The  only 
reason  to  fear  such  hardness  as  this  is 
that  one  has   nothing  to   say   which   is 

[213] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

worthy  of  such  expression.  Such  defini- 
tion is  cruel,  and  exposes  the  least  empti- 
ness of  thought,  the  smallest  and  most 
momentary  hesitation.  It  may  be  well  for 
most  of  us  to  take  refuge  in  a  little  merci- 
ful vagueness;  but  let  us  admit  this  as 
a  concession  to  human  weakness,  not 
plume  ourselves  upon  it  as  on  a  virtue. 
Technical  beauty  has  been  attained  in 
various  less  strenuous  ways,  but  nearly 
all  good  technical  practice  has  been  based 
on  two  considerations:  First,  that  it  is 
necessary  to  attend  separately  to  the  dif- 
ferent elements  of  painting  if  any  of  them 
are  to  be  carried  to  perfection;  Second, 
that  it  is  necessary  to  provide,  in  some 
form,  for  transparency  if  color  is  to  attain 
its  highest  effectiveness.  When  a  beam  of 
light  falls  upon  a  surface  of,  let  us  say, 
red  paint,  some  of  it  is  absorbed,  and  the 
red  rays  predominate  in  what  is  reflected 
back  to  the  eye,  but  a  great  many  of  the 
other  rays  are  also  bent  back  by  the  re- 

[214] 


TECHNIQUE 

sisting  surface  and  the  red  is  confused 
with  other  colors.  When  a  beam  of  light 
traverses  a  piece  of  red  glass  practically 
all  but  the  red  rays  are  absorbed  and  the 
eye  receives  a  sensation  of  pure  red.  When 
paint  is  laid  thinly  over  an  opaque,  re- 
flecting surface,  the  light  traverses  the 
color  to  the  surface  below,  is  reflected 
from  that,  and  passes  through  the  pigment 
to  the  eye  as  if  it  passed  through  colored 
glass.  This  is,  nearly  enough  for  our  pur- 
pose, the  scientific  reason  for  the  use  of 
transparent  color.  But  there  is  a  separate 
reason  for  the  use  of  the  light  ground.  As 
oil  paint  grows  older  it  tends  to  darken, 
but  it  also  tends  to  grow  more  translucent. 
If  there  is  a  dark  ground  under  it  this 
translucence  intensifies  its  darkness — if 
the  ground  is  light  it  counteracts  it. 

Primitive  technique  provided  for  the 
separate  consideration  of  the  elements  of 
painting,  and  for  the  transparency  of 
color,  in  the  simplest  manner.  Composi- 

[215] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

tion  and  drawing  were  exhaustively  stud- 
ied in  the  cartoon.  This  was  then  traced 
upon  a  perfectly  smooth  and  white  surface 
with  very  delicate  lines.  Light  and  shade 
had  hardly  to  be  considered  at  all.  The 
various  parts  of  the  picture  were  painted 
thinly  upon  the  white  ground,  each  bit 
finished  before  the  next  was  begun,  and 
when  the  last  bit  of  the  ground  was  cov- 
ered the  picture  was  complete.  It  was 
nearly  the  method  of  pure  water  color, 
though  with  a  little  more  use  of  semi- 
opaque  pigment,  and  had  all  the  lumi- 
nosity and  beauty  of  water  color.  It  is 
probably  the  most  permanent  method  of 
painting  ever  invented,  and  its  only 
weakness  is  its  unfitness  for  full  effects 
of  light  and  shade.  It  is  apparently  the 
method  employed  by  Holbein,  and  it  was 
revived  by  the  English  Pre-Raphaelites. 
I  do  not  know  who  invented  what,  after 
its  greatest  practitioners,  we  may  call 
the  Venetian  technique,  nor  when  and 

[216] 


TECHNIQUE 

how  it  was  developed  from  the  primitive 
manner.  We  can  only  take  it,  as  it  was 
used  by  the  great  masters,  and  try  to 
understand  its  nature  and  the  reasons  for 
its  use.  It  is  especially  suited  to  the  expres- 
sion of  full  and  strong  chiaroscuro  united 
with  pure  and  beautiful  color,  and  was 
practised  by  Correggio,  wherever  he  got 
it,  as  well  as  by  Titian  and  Tintoretto.  In 
this  manner  of  work  the  cartoon  ceased 
to  be  made,  and  composition,  drawing 
and  light  and  shade  were  created  with  the 
loaded  brush  upon  the  canvas,  leaving  the 
color  to  be  considered  alone,  at  the  end. 
Of  course  there  was  more  or  less  prelim- 
inary sketching  and  drawing,  but  light 
and  shade  had  become  so  important  that 
it  modified  everything  else  and  the  final 
drawing  could  not  be  decided  upon  with- 
out it.  This  preliminary  underpainting 
was,  as  nearly  as  we  can  tell,  practically 
monochromatic,  and  was  made  of  little 
more  than  black,  white  and  red,  Titian 

[*17] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

using  more  red  while  Correggio  and 
Tintoretto  used  more  black  and  white.  It 
was  solid,  opaque,  and  with  some  graining 
and  roughness  of  surface,  though  never  ex- 
cessive in  its  loading.  Over  this  ground  the 
true  color  surface  was  laid  thinly,  at  first 
in  united,  transparent  washes  or  glazes, 
later  with  modifications  of  semi-opaque 
as  well  as  transparent  color.  The  under- 
painting,  in  this  method,  could  be  worked 
at  as  long  as  necessary,  could  be  recon- 
sidered and  modified  until  design  and 
drawing  and  light  and  shade  were  entirely 
fused  and  entirely  satisfactory,  without 
danger  to  the  color,  which  could  be  given 
undivided  attention  when  the  time  came 
to  study  it.  In  this  underpainting  the 
modelling  of  the  flesh  could  be  pushed  to 
the  utmost  degree  of  refinement,  while 
draperies  could  be  brushed  in  with  the 
greatest  freedom.  When  it  was  completed 
it  answered  the  purpose  of  the  old  white 
ground  in  giving  a  cold  reflecting  surface, 

[218] 


o 

"So 
too 

£ 

6  * 


s 


TECHNIQUE 

over  which  the  color  could  be  laid  purely 
and  sweetly,  while  its  granulation  of  sur- 
face gave  crannies  for  the  glazing  colors 
to  lie  in  or  ridges  for  opaque  draggings 
to  catch  upon,  thus  providing  for  that 
breaking  of  different  colors  on  the  surface 
which  impressionism  has  achieved  in  a 
more  brutal  manner. 

In  this  manner  was  achieved  the  glowing 
beauty  of  the  earlier  canvases  of  Titian, 
the  lovely  silvery  tone  of  Correggio.  It 
is,  perhaps,  the  most  perfect  method  of 
painting  ever  invented  and  has  been  used 
by  many  painters  of  different  schools, 
while  other  methods  have  been  developed 
through  modifications  of  it.  Van  Dyck 
used  it  in  much  of  his  best  work,  Reynolds 
used  it,  or  an  attempt  at  it,  and  so  did 
Turner.  The  delicious  pearliness  of  Ver- 
meer  is  based  upon  an  underpainting  of 
black  and  white  or  even  of  blue  and  white, 
so  cold  is  it  at  times.  The  only  defect  of 
the  method  is  that  it  is  slow,  requiring 

[219] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

long  periods  of  drying,  especially  if  the 
underpainting  is  done  in  oil.  In  the  Vene- 
tian work  the  underpainting  was  prob- 
ably done  in  tempera — a  kind  of  water 
color — and  as  the  use  of  tempera  declined 
the  purely  Venetian  manner  could  not 
answer  the  purpose  of  one  who  wished  to 
paint  much  and  quickly.  Indeed  the  work 
of  Tintoretto,  so  much  of  which  is  ruin- 
ous, shows  that  it  was  never  a  manner 
which  lent  itself  to  hasty  production. 

For  these  reasons,  that  most  fecund  of 
painters,  Rubens,  deeply  steeped  in  the 
traditions  of  the  great  Venetians  whom 
he  reverenced,  invented  a  modification  of 
their  manner  by  combining  it,  to  some 
extent,  with  the  old  Flemish  primitive 
method.  He  used  the  smooth  white  ground 
of  the  primitives,  preferring  a  panel  to  a 
canvas  even  in  large  works,  and  on  this 
ground  he  laid  his  monochrome  founda- 
tion, reducing  it  to  extreme  thinness,  so 
that  the  effect  of  the  ground  is  everywhere 

[220] 


TECHNIQUE 

retained  and  his  monochrome  is  almost 
more  transparent  than  opaque.  Upon  this 
foundation  he  spread  his  final  painting  in 
great  flowing  washes  of  semi-opaque  color, 
dragging  in  last  of  all  his  sharp  high  lights 
of  loaded  pigment.  As  he  grew  older  and 
more  certainly  master  of  himself  and  his 
great  stores  of  knowledge  his  handling 
grew  ever  lighter  and  swifter,  his  pigment 
more  tenuous  and  delicate,  until  he  came 
to  paint  almost  with  vapor,  only  his 
high  lights  having  any  ponderable  sub- 
stance. To  those  who  are  inclined  to  think 
thinness  of  pigment  the  sign  of  timidity, 
and  to  imagine  that  heavy  loading  of  paint 
is  a  mark  of  virile  strength,  the  example 
of  this  most  robust  of  painters  may  be 
recommended  for  painful  consideration. 
The  Dutch  painters  of  the  seventeenth 
century  reduced  Rubens's  monochrome 
to  a  purely  transparent  rubbing,  and 
painted  into  it  with  opaque  and  semi- 
opaque  pigment.  Van  Dyck  painted  in 

[221  ] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

Rubens's  manner  when  he  did  not  paint 
in  the  pure  Venetian  method.  Watteau 
learned  his  art  of  Rubens,  and  as  all  the 
French  eighteenth  century  derives  from 
Watteau  and  all  the  English  eighteenth 
century  from  Van  Dyck,  the  influence 
of  Rubens  was  predominant  in  the  tech- 
nique of  painting  until  David  swept  the 
whole  art  away  as  unregarded  rubbish. 
It  was  easier,  in  considering  the  develop- 
ment of  technical  methods,  to  pass  over 
the  work  of  one  of  the  greatest  of  tech- 
nicians who  had  very  little  influence  on 
that  development,  greatly  as  his  work  has 
always  been  admired  by  all  competent 
judges  of  painting.  Veronese  was  never 
properly  a  Venetian.  He  was  a  mature 
artist  of  great  reputation  before  he  went 
to  Venice,  and  he  came  of  a  school  with 
a  long  tradition  of  its  own.  Also,  he  was  a 
decorator,  accustomed  to  canvases  of  vast 
size,  and  to  a  clearer  and  lighter  key  of 
color  than  that  of  the  true  Venetian  school. 

[222] 


TECHNIQUE 

I  have  never  seen  anything  to  convince  me 
that  he  employed  the  true  Venetian  tech- 
nique, even  in  the  painting  of  flesh,  and 
I  am  sure  he  did  not  employ  it  in  the  paint- 
ing of  draperies.  It  is  not  so  easy  to  say 
how  he  did  paint  as  how  he  did  not,  and 
in  his  own  handiwork  his  methods  are 
used  with  such  discretion  and  such  va- 
riety— are  so  hidden  behind  the  result — 
that  they  seem  undecipherable.  In  the 
work  of  his  pupils  and  assistants,  how- 
ever, the  process,  or  some  of  it,  is  more  leg- 
ible ;  and  we  have  a  written  account  of  it, 
lamentably  brief,  to  be  sure,  based  upon 
the  statement  of  his  son.  In  the  first  place 
he  must  have  had  some  sort  of  pretty 
thorough  drawing  upon  his  canvas,  though 
this  is  not  mentioned  in  the  description 
we  have  of  his  method.  I  am  inclined  to 
think  that  it  must  have  been  a  rub-in,  a 
frotte,  in  pretty  full  light  and  shade,  and 
I  am  sure  that  it  must  have  fixed  all  the 
important  details   of  the   picture.   Such 

[223] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

composition  as  his,  extending  to  the  small- 
est folds  of  drapery,  was  never  accom- 
plished by  leaving  anything  of  importance 
to  the  invention  of  the  moment.  Over  this 
drawing  he  laid  his  masses  of  local  color 
in  half-tone,  we  are  told — these  half-tones 
being  "laid  in  opaque  color."  Whether 
these  masses  of  half-tone  had  any  model- 
ling I  do  not  know,  but  if  they  were  laid 
pretty  thinly  and  evenly  over  a  strong 
frotte,  enough  of  that  frotte  would  show 
through  them  to  answer  all  necessary 
purposes.  Upon  this  preparation  he  struck 
in  both  his  lights  and  his  shadows,  "leav- 
ing the  middle  tint  visible  everywhere 
between  them,  as  it  was  first  prepared." 
In  painting  in  the  lights  he  used  a  light 
yellow  rather  than  white,  because  yellow 
has  much  greater  carrying  power  and 
luminosity  than  white,  and  its  chromatic 
quality,  as  yellow,  is  quite  lost  at  a  short 
distance.  The  shadows  were,  undoubtedly, 
re-enforced  with  pure,  transparent,  glazing 

[224] 


Plate  32. — "Dr.  Faustus,"  from  the  etching  by  Rembrandt. 


TECHNIQUE 

colors.  These  lights  and  shadows,  with  the 
original  middle  tint,  or  local  color,  be- 
tween them,  are  sharply  to  be  distin- 
guished in  the  work  of  Veronese's  imita- 
tors. In  his  own  work  they  are  fused 
together  into  the  most  brilliant,  rich  and 
varied  surface  imaginable.  He  never 
makes  any  display  of  virtuosity,  but  for 
mere  ease  and  accuracy  of  touch  he  sur- 
passes the  most  expert  of  the  Northern 
painters  while  his  work  is  vastly  superior 
to  theirs  in  decorative  beauty  and  classic 
grace. 

I  have  described  this  manner  of  painting 
at  considerable  length  because  it  seems 
to  me  best  fitted  of  any  for  our  modern 
needs.  Indeed  it  comes  pretty  near  to  our 
modern  "direct  method"  except  that  it  is 
far  more  systematic,  allowing,  as  all  good 
methods  do,  of  the  separate  study  of  the 
different  elements  of  the  art,  and  provid- 
ing for  transparency  and  the  breaking  of 
color.  The  composition,  the  drawing,  and 

[225] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

the  great  masses  of  light  and  shade  are 
first  fixed  in  the  preliminary  frotte.  The 
arrangement  of  colors  and  the  great  color 
balance  of  the  whole  picture  are  settled  in 
the  painting  in  middle  tint.  In  the  final 
execution  there  is  nothing  to  think  of  but 
the  brilliancy  of  rendering  and  the  quality 
of  color  in  detail.  The  transparent  re-en- 
forcement of  the  shadows  gives  them  great 
fulness  and  purity  of  color,  while  the 
breaking  of  the  lights,  with  a  crumbly 
touch,  over  the  middle  tints  gives  the 
necessary  vibration  and  the  necessary 
graying  of  surface  without  any  diminution 
of  the  force  of  pure  color.  It  is  a  method 
which  lends  itself  admirably  to  large 
decorative  work  which  must  be  done  with 
some  rapidity,  but  I  do  not  see  why  it 
is  not  equally  applicable  to  smaller  and 
more  realistic  pictures. 
Neither  here  nor  elsewhere  in  this  vol- 
ume, however,  am  I  concerned  to  give 
precise  recipes,  and  I  can  no  more  tell  any 

[226] 


TECHNIQUE 

one  how  to  paint  than  how  to  draw  or  to 
color.  What  I  wish  to  do  is  rather  to  call 
attention  to  the  qualities  of  art  that  we 
have  lost  sight  of  in  our  work  of  to-day 
and  that  we  must  set  ourselves  to  recover 
if  we  would  bring  painting  to  anything 
like  its  ancient  perfection  and  dignity. 
Of  these  qualities  craftsmanship  is  not 
the  least  and  is  one  of  the  most  neglected. 
If  I  can  make  you  see  that  technical 
beauty  exists,  and  that  it  cannot  be  at- 
tained without  thought  and  method,  I 
shall  have  fulfilled  my  purpose. 
There  have  been  many  good  methods 
of  painting — there  may,  conceivably,  be 
as  good  methods  yet  to  be  invented — 
but  all  good  methods  have  these  two  things 
in  common :  they  are  methodical  and  they 
are  economical.  To  paint  well,  in  any 
manner,  one  must  know  from  the  first 
touch  what  the  result  is  to  be,  and  one 
must  place  no  touch  on  the  canvas  that 
is  not  a  necessary  step  toward  the  attain- 

[227] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

ment  of  this  result.  Every  brush  stroke 
that  does  not  lead  to  the  desired  end  leads 
away  from  it.  Every  particle  of  pigment 
that  is  not  used  is  worse  than  wasted,  it  is 
obstructive.  It  is  matter  out  of  place,  which 
is  the  best  definition  I  know  of  dirt.  It 
may  be  that  the  method  employed  will  call 
for  heavy  loading,  but  it  must  be  heavy 
loading  where  it  is  needed  and  because  it 
is  needed.  It  must  be  as  precisely  regu- 
lated as  the  thinnest  film  of  glazing  or  of 
scumbling.  There  is,  in  good  painting, 
no  room  for  accident  and  no  cure  for  a 
blunder.  It  may  be  patched,  and  more  or 
less  concealed — it  cannot  be  remedied. 
To  paint  well,  technically,  is  to  have  pro- 
found knowledge  both  of  the  process  and 
of  the  result  desired;  is  to  have  perfect 
foresight  and  perfect  skill;  is  to  be  both 
craftsman  and  artist.  It  is  first  of  all  to 
be  a  composer,  a  draughtsman,  a  colorist, 
and  then,  as  a  crowning  grace,  to  be  a 
technician,  a  master  of  one's  tools. 

[228] 


TECHNIQUE 

And  now,  if  I  have  at  all  succeeded  in 
my  effort  to  show  what  the  art  of  painting 
is  and  has  been;  if  I  have  given  any  no- 
tion of  what  it  means  to  choose  a  subject 
intelligently  and  treat  it  largely,  nobly, 
and  with  imaginative  grasp  of  its  signifi- 
cance; what  it  means  to  compose  a  picture 
thoroughly,  so  that  no  detail  of  it  shall 
escape  from  the  control  of  the  guiding 
principle  of  design ;  what  it  is  to  draw  with 
expression,  with  style,  and  with  precision, 
and  to  clothe  design  and  drawing  with 
color  at  once  beautiful  and  true;  what  it  is, 
and  how  difficult,  to  produce  mere  mate- 
rial beauty  of  pigment  and  of  surface— if ,  I 
say,  I  have  at  all  succeeded  in  this  you 
will  begin  to  suspect  that  it  is  no  easy  road 
I  am  pointing  out  and  that  it  takes  more 
than  a  cheerful  self-confidence,  a  couple  of 
years  in  an  art  school,  and  a  palette  and 
brushes  to  make  a  painter.  The  way  of 
classicism  and  conservatism  is  no  safe 
path  for  the  timid  and  unenterprising,  and 

[229] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

he  who  attempts  it  will  find  that  he  will 
need  all,  and  more  than  all,  the  energy, 
the  determination,  and  the  individuality  he 
possesses.  He  will  have  to  go  over  and 
through  obstacles,  not  around  them.  He 
will  have  to  hew  his  way  through  thickets 
that  have  grown  up  from  long  neglect.  He 
will  have  to  eschew  all  tempting  by-paths 
and  short  cuts.  And  he  will  have,  for  the 
most  part,  to  go  alone,  stubbornly  hold- 
ing to  his  direction  while  the  crowd  goes 
the  other  way. 

What  the  classic  ideal  asks  of  an  artist 
is  no  less  than  a  thorough  mastery  of  all 
that  is  known  of  the  aspects  of  nature  and 
all  that  is  known  of  the  processes  of  art, 
and  it  requires  this  merely  as  a  prelimi- 
nary equipment  for  creation  and  for  self- 
expression.  The  task  of  acquiring  such 
mastery  is  almost  appalling  in  its  mag- 
nitude, but  at  least  there  is  little  danger 
that  he  who  is  capable  of  an  approxima- 
tion to  it  will  have  no  personality  to  ex- 

[230] 


TECHNIQUE 

press.  And  there  is  this  encouragement 
for  us,  that  the  thing  has  been  done,  and 
therefore  may  be  done  again.  It  is  the 
failures  that  are  discouraging.  When  one 
sees  exhibitions  and  galleries  full  of  pict- 
ures, the  work  of  able  men  who  have 
spent  their  lives  in  fruitless  effort  and  have 
left  nothing  that  will  live,  one  falls  into  a 
profound  despair  of  ever  doing  better  than 
they.  But  one  has  only  to  see  one  mas- 
terpiece— even  one  bit  of  honest  and 
beautiful  work — and  hope  revives.  If 
he  could  do  it,  why  not  I  ?  And  the  great- 
est masters  of  all  have  the  divine  priv- 
ilege of  making  the  task  seem  positively 
easy. 
To  the  serious  young  artist  I  would  say: 
Fix  your  eye  on  the  highest,  gird  yourself 
for  the  journey,  and  God  speed!  If  you 
fall  by  the  way  you  may  at  least  fall  face 
forward.  And  it  may  be  that  even  you 
may  reach  the  goal.  It  may  be  that  you, 

[231] 


THE  CLASSIC  POINT  OF  VIEW 

too,  may  find  yourself,  in  the  end,  among 
that  small  but  glorious  company  whose 
work  the  world  will  cherish  and  whose 
memory  the  world  will  not  let  die. 


[232] 


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